Infinite Stratos: Sacred World
by Kaizer23
Summary: How a chance encounter can change future events... An Infinite Stratos rewrite.
1. Beginnings

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Infinite Stratos or its characters. The only thing I do own in this piece of work thus far, is _Shinsei Tenka_ and my OC _._

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><p>Ichika Orimura the first and so far, only male IS user.<p>

Ichika had pretty much lived a very normal life. Though there were several things that already does make him unique aside from being the first and only male IS user.

During his last year in middle school (which was a year after Rin left), he met a silver long-haired woman that seemed to radiate power during his trip back to his house. She wore a simple dress and always had what he assumed at that time, a katana strapped to her back.

The same woman seemed to watch over him every time he headed home, but once he reached a certain distance away, she disappears into the forest.

A few weeks after his first sighting of the woman, he was attacked by a bunch of delinquents that were apparently drunk. Just as he was about to be stabbed to death by one of the delinquents carrying a butterfly knife, the silver haired girl intervened and beat the delinquents with a mere bouken.

This was what motivated Ichika to approach the woman.

A few days later he approached the woman that had constantly watched over him. Once in front of her, he immediately fell to his knees and pleaded to be taught with her sword style.

"Please teach me how to fight!" Ichika said earnestly.

He wasn't quite sure what made him do it, but Ichika always felt that being protected by others was something he couldn't just keep getting himself into. His own sister had sacrificed her second victory in the tournament just to save him. It was all due to his helplessness. He had already learned kendo before, but the style that the woman used to help him surpassed all of his expectations on what the sword could do.

The woman was obviously flustered, to which Ichika merely thought of as embarrassment.

"Why do you want to learn from me?" She asked somewhat shyly.

Ichika remained in the same position and replied, "I want to have the ability to protect myself... I don't want to be the one always being saved and... I want to protect those important to me."

The woman was silent for a moment and Ichika hoped his answer was enough.

"Though not the best of answers," She paused making Ichika more nervous and somewhat afraid that he would be rejected, "But you would hopefully form a different answer under my tutelage."

"Then..!" Ichika trailed off as he looked hopefully at her.

The woman greeted him with a warm smile, "My name's Yuuki Amakusa.(1) From now on, meet me here two hours before school and right after school. In your free days, meet me here at 4AM."

Ichika remained unperturbed by the proposed training time and gratefully accepted it.

Yuuki Amakusa was about two years older than Ichika and was a master of the style that she used against the delinquents. She was unexpectedly young for someone to master such a style. Despite her graceful and royal aura, her training methods are definitely not.

The following weeks had Ichika worked through the bone with her inhumane training methods. Ranging from running around the town outskirt's at least three times every morning and increasing his reaction rate by having projectiles thrown at him while he was instructed to jump from tree to tree in the forest without getting hit, in the afternoon. He was already dead tired, and he hadn't even begun learning the style yet! The training however, dramatically increased his reaction rate, speed and stamina.

Despite the difficulty of the training, he never once complained (at least not outwardly). If this was what it took to get stronger to protect others or at the very least, himself, he would endure it.

Once Yuuki decided that it was time for him to learn the style, she gave him an ultimatum he must follow: never teach or tell anyone about the style and two that the style that she was going to pass down to him should never be used unless in a life or death situation.

The style in question was the Shinsei Tenka style.

The Shinsei Tenka style relies mainly in quick fatal executions, which made the style extremely difficult to control. The main reason that she told him not use the style unless in the said situations, is because even with the use of a bouken, the style itself could cripple opponents without the control of a master.

Aside from this, Shinsei Tenka is a constantly evolving style. New successors to the style would have to incorporate their own styles into Shinsei Tenka to further their advancement. In a way, there are many Shinsei Tenka variations, but only few have actually survived unto the present. Those that survived unto the present is either described to be the strongest version of the Shinsei Tenka or a static version of the first. (2)

From then on, the training he received got harder and harder which if he thought about it, would have been impossible at the day he began training. He would then spar with Yuuki at least one hour during the afternoon (to which he never won a single match). And to top it all off, he was keeping it all a secret from his sister (though he had a feeling that she already knew something regarding his situation).

Yuuki Amakusa, though strict with her training regiment, was a nice person to be around with. She genuinely cared for Ichika's well being, which made Ichika question as to what was the reason she had watched over him in the first place.

It was about the time of his graduation from Middle School that he had learned most of the Shinsei Tenka style. It was also that time when Yuuki left his town.

To Ichika however, it felt like a disappearance.

The sudden disappearance of Yuuki struck him odd and had him worried. Yuuki had began to act rather oddly in the days that led up to her disappearance. He thought nothing of it, until a whole week of not encountering her. When he tried to go to the usual spots, he found no one there. When he went to the clearing in the forest that they usually trained, all he found was a katana addressed to him. The disappearance basically made his thoughts go all over the place.

When Ichika went to the Community Center to take his entrance exam for the high school he planned to go to, his unfocused state coupled with his unfamiliarity of the Community Center got him lost and had him accidentally take an IS entrance exam.

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><p><em>Which brings us to the present...<em>

After being berated by his older sister regarding his class conduct, he had unwittingly labeled himself as the _class idiot._

He knew he should have read that thick book on IS before he got to school... Somehow, the thought of going into a school intended only for females had him freeze up and think mainly about how he was going to survive in the school. Which of course didn't help with his current situation.

It was only the first day and he had practically attracted the attention of the whole school. It didn't help that he lacked knowledge regarding IS in general. He was male for crying out loud! He never once thought that he would be in a class learning about IS, let alone piloting one.

Also, due to his so called male pride, he had accepted a challenge from a girl named Cecilia, the candidate representative of Europe. Which meant (as he has recently learned) that she has a private IS.

It was lunch time and in five days, the battle that would decide who would be the class representative is going to take place.

According to his sister, his very own personal IS will be arriving at the day of the battle. Which meant, he can't get any experience for now, so the only way of improving his chance on winning the battle, was to stuff his head about technical knowledge on IS.

"Houki, can you teach me about IS?" Was the first few words that Ichika blurted out once Houki and Ichika sat down to eat for lunch.

Houki apparently needed a moment to think about it. They were childhood friends right? Why can't she help him now at his time of need?

An upperclassman, hearing of Ichika's ask for help approached there table and volunteered to tutor him about IS.

Ichika was about to agree, mainly due to the fact that Ichika had a feeling that Houki was going to reject tutoring him. He was pleasantly surprised however when Houki said, "I will be the one tutoring him."

The upperclassman argued, "I'm a senor so wouldn't it make more sense that I should be the one tutoring him?"

Houki replied in the same calm tone as before, "I'm the younger sister of Shinono Tabane." This apparently shocked the upperclassman. "So there's no need."

The upperclassman wanted to argue, but it seemed that she had no choice on the matter and left.

It was later that day when he found out that Houki first wanted to check how his skills in Kendo had held out in the years that they hadn't met.

Ichika was at first confident he would win, that was until he remembered that Yuuki made him promise he would keep Shinsei Tenka a secret unless he's in a dire situation.

So Ichika had to use what little he could remember from his time at the kendo club and what his sister had taught him.

Due to the fact that he hadn't practiced kendo for several years (and the fact that he was holding himself back from reacting using Shinsei Tenka – something that was apparently beaten into him by Yuuki), he lost albeit convincingly well.

"You've gotten weaker Ichika!" Houki berated. "What have you been doing all these years?"

Ichika acted as if he was exhausted, if he wasn't the least bit exhausted, that would have drawn a bit of suspicion. "I've been part of the go home club for 5 years consecutively." Not exactly a lie, learning Shinsei Tenka wasn't really a club.

Houki had a pensive expression.

"I thought we're suppose to be learning about IS not kendo?" Ichika asked as he stood up.

"I – It can't be helped!" Houki stammered, a complete contrast to her normal stern and serious voice that he had grown accustomed to. "Fighting in an IS is similar to fighting in real life. So until then, I'll be training you in kendo!"

Ichika inwardly facepalmed. It was times like this he wished Yuuki didn't ask him to keep Shinsei Tenka a secret.

Sighing to himself, he accepted the training. If anything, the kendo practice would hopefully give him a much needed secondary style to fall back to when Shinsei Tenka couldn't be used.

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><p><em>Day of the Duel...<em>

The duel was to take place after class. So naturally, the day proceeded normally. Of course the normality of it all despite the match that was coming at the end of the day, unnerved Ichika mainly because all he had been doing the last few days were kendo training. None of which were anywhere related to the piloting of an IS.

It was about the end of classes when Yamada-sensei came and alerted him about the arrival of his personal IS.

So Houki and Ichika raced towards Arena 3's pit to see the IS.

"Ichika," Houki said as she ran along with Ichika towards Arena 3, "Are you really ready for this?"

"To be honest, I don't really know." Ichika replied sheepishly, "I mean, all we did was practice kendo."

"Well, it's because your forms has gotten worse, although your reflex and speed is actually pretty good."

Once they reached the pit, they came face to face with a white looking IS.

"This is your personal IS, Ichika." The voice of Chifuyu rang over from the PA system.

Ichika slowly walked over it and touched the IS with his right hand.

Upon contact, a sudden jolt coursed through his body – like a pulse of a human being.

"This feeling...!" Ichika muttered. For some reason he could feel an uncanny familiarity towards the IS. Whatever it was, he couldn't quite remember it.

"Is there anything wrong Orimura-kun?" Yamada sensei asked over the loud speaker.

"No, everything's alright." Ichika said firmly as he began to put on the IS.

Once done, Ichika checked the settings, Yamada-sensei's voice rang out from the loud speaker once again, "The IS your in right now is called the Byaku Shiki, it only has one usable weapons as of now mainly since it only has one slot."

Ichika checked the weapons, "Yukihiro Nigata... it's Chifuyu-nee's weapon..."

"Cecilia's IS is Blue Tears. It's a sniper type." Yamada-sensei said.

"Blue Tears..." Ichika had a gut feeling this won't be easy. If his only weapon was Yukihiro Nigata – a close range weapon – then how would he fare against a long range one? Yuuki had already beaten into him that range gives a huge advantage over one no matter the skill level, and he was a beginner at this!

"Prepare to launch Ichika." Chifuyu's voice said over the loud speaker, bringing him out of his reverie.

"Ok..." Ichika took a calming deep breath. There's nothing he could do about it, he would have to play it cool if he aimed to win, "Byaku Shiki launching!"

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><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

(1) Yuuki Amakusa is the OC that I have created in this fan fiction (though this could be debated otherwise – not saying much for now). She will be referred to every now and then, but her actual physical appearance during the time line or her next major role won't come out until much later.

(2) To those who hadn't realized the reference, this is similar to the evolution of the Shigure Soen Ryu style of Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Despite the similarity with how the style grows, it's a style that I've created – thus has essentially very different techniques. Shinsei Tenka however, will not play an integral role on the plot for the time being. By what I mean by static version of the first is that the style hadn't changed at all since it was first taught (like scrolls describing how the style was originally).

This fan fiction is mainly a rewriting of the IS anime. I haven't quite read the IS light novel (since it isn't fully translated) and I find the art style of the manga horrible. So most of the scenes will be based on the anime. I'll also be exploring different viewpoints (but mainly Ichika's) to provide a wider perspective of the characters.

No defined pairing in this fan fiction. I'll basically leave it like how the anime has gone by having the girls (plus an OC or two) showing attraction to him with Ichika acting none the wiser (he's oblivious).

**NOTE:** This is a side fiction that I've written and had been staying within my hard drive for a long while now. In other words, this won't be regularly updated or might not even be completed. So expect 3-5 months (or even yearly) gaps from each update. I've just decided to post this for the heck of it.


	2. Blue Tears

**Disclaimer: I don't own Infinite Stratos or its characters... The only thing I do own is the eventual plot of this fan fiction and to a certain extent, the OC Yuuki Amakusa.**

**As a note for future chapters... I'll be leaving the disclaimer out. I mean, if I did own Infinite Stratos, why would I post my work here?**

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><p>"Byaku Shiki! Launching!"<p>

Ichika was launched by using the catapult system of the pit. Once he was off the platform, it took several moments for him to gather himself at his shaky launch into the air.

"I'll give you one last chance." Cecilia said to him after he straightened himself in the air.

"Last chance?"

"It is quite obvious that I'll be the one winning here, so if you apologize now, I might forgive you."

With the tone that she used it was quite obvious she was overconfident.

Ichika knew that it wouldn't be an easy fight, but if he played it cool and took advantage of the opponent's over confidence, maybe he could come out on top.

"You don't call that a chance." Ichika said, while he looked over the information on Cecilia's IS.

It was at this point that he knew that he would need every single information he could gather to win this match. Yuuki had beaten it to his head that battles with unknown people usually relied on not only skill, but also with the information one had.

One can close the gap even if a little, by knowing your opponent well. It was really just like the saying, 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'

Despite this, it didn't say much about Cecilia's IS except the fact that it was a sniper type. Which meant, that he was in a huge advantage since his only weapon was a sword.

It's well known that range in a battle can create a huge difference between opponents.

"If that's the case..."

Ichika's IS alerted him that the opponent had just switched to Shooting mode. In other words, the battle had begun.

"It's time to say goodbye!" Cecilia immediately materialized her sniper rifle and shot it with pinpoint accuracy on Ichika.

Taken aback by the speed of the attack, Ichika brought his arms in front of himself to shield himself.

Thankfully, the IS barrier system had protected him from the main brunt of the attack. But he was still thrown off balance and nearly fell to the ground on his back if he didn't recover.

His IS alerted him to the fact that his barrier has just lost 30 points.

With what little he knew of IS, he knew that he would lose if the barrier was to reach 0.

He wasn't given another moment to recollect his thoughts as Cecilia continued to fire.

Ichika was reduced to dodging each attack as he couldn't get any closer on his opponent. Not to mention the fact that he still wasn't used to piloting an IS.

"Now, let me see you dance..." Cecilia said as she continued to fire relentlessly at him. "...to the waltz orchestrated by Blue tears and I, Cecilia Alcott!"

He carefully avoided each and every attack. He couldn't allow himself to rely on the shield unless he had no choice.

"Damn it... I need to bring out my weapon..."

An option showed up within his screen, reminding him of the only weapon he had in his arsenal.

_'Using a sword against a sniper is practically suicidal...'_

Materializing Yukihiro Nigata, he tried to close in on Cecilia while making sure to prevent any direct hits that would reduce his shield's points like the first attack that Cecilia threw at him.

"You're quite foolish to think that you can beat a sniper with your sword." Cecilia continued to fire at him.

The attacks had gotten more accurate and made him abandon his attempt.

His eyes were finally getting used to the speed to which Cecilia fired at, but it didn't mean he could react to it. So even if he anticipated such an attack, he might fall into the line of fire of another beam.

_'I wonder if I can do it...'_

During the time that Yuuki was training him, she had attempted to train him with defending against projectiles.

The training was to sharpen his eyes so he could avoid things coming at his direction. It also served to sharpen his instinct on whether he should shield using his sword, dodge or cut up the incoming projectile.

Right now, he was putting the dodging to the test.

If he could use his sword as a shield, or better yet, as something to cut the incoming the attacks, he would be able to close in on Cecilia.

But one thing he had to note, could his weapon do such a thing?

The main reason that swordsmen would have a difficult time beating those who use guns, was due to the fact that bullets traveled faster than the speed of human recognition. To put it simply, it was just impossible to see something that little, go at such high speeds. This was not even taking into account is a swordsmen can shield it using his/her weapon. For one, shielding it would prove futile as it would probably just pierce the sword and right into the swordsman's body. Attempting to cut the bullet before it reached you would be a lot more difficult as it was near impossible to perfectly hit the bullet dead center. Anywhere else, it would just clip the sword and could be redirected to random areas which could serve even more fatal.

The main difference in this scenario was that the attacks were beams. So maybe, if his sword was strong enough, he could cut up the beam to reduce a direct damage and charge through to Cecilia.

"You know, for a beginner, you're the first to last this long against my Blue Tears." She commended, "That deserves some praise."

"Thanks, I guess." Ichika replied, as he straightened himself in the air and got himself ready.

If he was going to try and cut up those beams, it would be a lot more difficult the closer he got.

"Shall we move on to the finale, then?"

The wing tips of Cecilia's IS disassembled itself and began to fly at multiple directions around Ichika while firing beams.

It was practically an all round attack.

_'Crap!'_

Dodging the first barrage, he weaved in and out of each attack. His IS's shield was slowly going down as the number of indirect hits continued to pile up.

The wing tips gathered once again at Cecilia's IS as she locked on with her weapon, "I'm taking out your left leg!"

The rifle fired with extreme precision.

"Kuh... It's all or nothing!"

With that declaration, Ichika used his sword to cut up the attack that had been fired at him. Almost as if he had expected it from the very beginning.

The action served to shock everyone within the audience (minus Chifuru), including Cecilia.

Cecilia released her wing tips once again to hopefully catch Ichika off guard by the multi-directional fire.

Ichika continued to weave in and out of fire while cutting up attacks that came at him from the front. He was going to charge in and breakthrough – it no longer mattered if he got hit, so long as it was an indirect attack that didn't affect his momentum, he would weather it off.

_'Shield energy down to 312 points huh...'_

It had gone down by forty points since he started to charge in. But he couldn't back down now.

Bringing his sword down on Cecilia as he closed in, he apparently missed as Cecilia backed off.

Usually a battle between swordsmen and those who uses long range weaponry, such as guns, could be determined upon the range of a battle. At long range, a long range user would undoubtedly have an advantage since their attacks could reach the opponent before they could come at them. The same could be said at short range. Since short range requires less preparation time compared to long range weaponry, at a short range battle, a long range is at a distinct disadvantage. This was also mostly due to the fact that long range users relied heavily on long range attacks.

In this case, Cecilia obviously didn't have any back-up plans should the opponent go close range as she backed off.

"You're brash!" She huffed as she flew further away from him while using her wing tips as cover fire, "However, resistance is futile!"

Ichika didn't falter and dodge each attack as his body finally got used to speed of the attack and the movements regarding his IS has gotten more and more natural.

"I get it now." Ichika said as he cut up one of the wing tips with his sword, "Your weapon doesn't move without your input. On top of that you're limited to only using that attack, since you need to be extremely concentrated on controlling it."

He finally figured it out. Multi-tasking was a very difficult task. Cecilia not only had to be aware of her surroundings, she also had to be aware of the surroundings of her wing tips unless they get caught within their own fire. If Cecilia was a perfect multi-tasker, this battle would have probably ended much earlier.

His left hand was starting to clench and unclench as he could finally see his chance on winning.

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><p>"Orimura-kun is incredible." Yamada-sensei said in awe, "It doesn't look like it's only his second time piloting one."<p>

Indeed, the way he controlled his IS on avoiding the beam attacks looked like he had been trained to dodging the attacks. Add to the fact that he also figured out the flaw within Cecilia's control while trying to figure out how to control his own was pretty amazing.

"That fool. He's being overconfident." Chifuyu said in the same stern voice she used to teach.

The two were currently in the main control area of the arena and were watching the IS match. The said area controlled a variety of things within the arena – such as the barrier that protected the crowds, emergency doors and so on. It was also where teachers would supervise battles like the one that was currently happening now.

"How do you know that?"

"Do you notice how he clenches his left hand? He has a habit of doing that, and whenever he does he usually makes a stupid mistake."

Yamada looked over at the screen. Indeed, Ichika was clenching his left hand a few moments later however, it suddenly stopped as Ichika's form straightened and his eye involuntarily twitched.

_'Huh?'_

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><p><em>Don't get overconfident!<em>

Ichika's eyes widened as he remembered the main reprimand he would get whenever he was under Yuuki's sparring session.

Like his sister, Yuuki had apparently discerned what his body did whenever he got overconfident. She didn't notice it at first, but as time went by, she saw the pattern.

_In real life, if you make a mistake you'll get killed!_

Ichika straightened himself and calmed himself down.

_'I'm an idiot aren't I?'_

There were many times he got overconfident when he sparred with Yuuki, as such, she was quick to beat it to his head that doing so would yield nothing.

His eye involuntarily twitched as his body remembered the phantom pain that usually resulted whenever he got overconfident.

_'Yeah... a real idiot...'_

He had originally planned on taking out the two remaining wing tips and making a dash towards Cecilia since he thought that the only weapon he would have to be worried about after that was her rifle, but now he was beginning to question if that was indeed the only weapon she had remaining.

It would be logical to think that there would be more since she was the representative of England right? Not to mention the fact that she was watching him passively instead of trying to go on the offensive. With two down, the strain on inputting calculations should have been reduced by half - which of course meant that more fire from her rifle should be raining down at him.

_'So she's trying to draw me into a trap... but what?'_

Dodging the beams coming at him, he noticed that there were two barrel looking things below her waist.

_'That?'_

It could be another form of beam weaponry, or even a sort of booster, but until it did what it was supposed to do, he wouldn't know.

Cutting up the last two wing tips, he turned towards Cecilia, his eyes on the look out for what the unknown weapon contained.

"Hm... You fell for it!"

As expected, the weaponry below her waist hoisted up to aim at him while he turned towards her. Missiles fired from the barrel.

_'Homing missiles?'_

If he tried to cut one up, the other one would probably hit him. Not to mention the fact that he didn't know if the missile would explode instantly upon impact with his sword.

"Kuh..."

Throwing his sword with as much accuracy he could muster while thrusting full speed towards the missiles, the sword impacted one of the missiles causing an explosion that temporarily knocked the other missile of course.

Taking that opportunity, he grabbed his falling sword and dashed full speed towards Cecilia, paying no heed to the remaining missle as it would be all over if the battle ended. In matches like this, the IS were usually connected to the mainframe that would stop any and all functionality of the IS should the barrier go down in any one of them (provided it was a one on one match), that included weapons like missles.

"This is it!"

Ichika unconsciously activated the unique feature of his sword, he never noticed its secondary effect until the horn rang signifying the ending of the match.

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><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Whew... I thought I would update this, like in December... but I guess updating now would be alright.

Anyway, for those who didn't quite get it – Ichika did not go through his first shift. I would be using that for more dramatic (or epic) effect later on. It was also thanks to Yuuki's teachings that he didn't need to rely on the first shift to save himself.

Anyway, please review and tell me of what you think about the story thus far. I'd like to get some review to motivate me more on updating despite the fact that this is merely a side fiction.

On another note, I might skip some arcs that has little to no change. The only reason I haven't skipped this part is because I wanted to lay out how Ichika thinks and how certain things from the past affected him (also due to the fact that he didn't go through first shift).


	3. IS: Learning

Ichika was now on the hatch to which he used to launch himself into the air, his IS returning to its inactive form – a fingerless gray glove that covered his right hand.

He had gone down from the air and was on the process of asking what exactly happened.

"Why did I lose?"

For some reason, before he could deliver the final blow, his barrier reached zero. As far as he knew, Cecilia wasn't firing at him anymore and he was sure that nothing had hit him during the process of the attempted attack.

"Because you used a Shield Nullifying Attack." Was Chifuyu's curt reply, "This is what you get for not considering your weapon's characteristics."

It was true that knowing your opponent well was considered a great advantage, but if you didn't take into account your own circumstances, then it would be null point anyways.

"Shield Nullifying?"

He hadn't heard of that before. Not to mention the fact that he barely knows anything regarding IS in the first place.

"It's an attack that does direct damage to the opponent ignoring their barrier. It's the special ability of Yukihiro Nigata." Chifuyu explained.

As if to emphasize her point, a screen showing his attempt on using the attack was being replayed behind her.

"It's a function that converts your barrier's energy into attack power. This ability was the key to my championship win in Mondo Grasso."

Mondo Grasso was an IS tournament that occurred regularly. During that said tournament, Chifuyu gained recognition for winning said tournament with merely a sword. She was also set to win the following tournament after that, but due to insinuating circumstances, she had forfeited the championship.

"I see. So I probably used to much energy that resulted to having Byaku Shiki's whole shield energy drained."

He really needed to learn more about IS.

"In an IS match, you lose when you've depleted all of your Shield Energy." Yamada-sensei added.

That much he knew. Even if he didn't know the technicalities, he knew that matches stopped when one side is depleted of shield energy. This was to prevent needless casualties.

"The Shield Nullifying Attack deals damage to the opponent while consuming your Shield Energy. So you could say it's a double-edged sword of sorts." Yamada-sensei said, summing up what was said about Yukihiro Nigata.

"In other words, your craft has a defect." Chifuyu added.

"Defect?" His IS was broken?

"Let me rephrase it," She said as if reading his thoughts, "The IS was never really perfect to begin with, so you can't really say that it's defective. Basically your IS is more attuned for attacking that other IS."

Ichika sighed. Well at least it wasn't broken or anything. He had somewhat expected that his own IS would be battle oriented. If it was a long range type or a defensive type, he would practically throw anything he learned about fighting out of the window just to adapt to the new style.

"Right now your IS is in its inactive form, but if you summon it, you may deploy." Yamada-sensei said as she walked up to him with a guidebook. "This is a guide on IS, so please read them."

Ichika looked at the book with barely disguised trepidation. He never really did have the attention span on reading such a large book. He was only interested on reading things like manga or light novels, but when it came to textbook or guidebooks, he would rather throw it to the trash bin (like he did with the first IS book he was given before coming to school here).

Houki, who had been watching the whole match up until he landed onto the pits, sighed in relief. Somehow Ichika had made it back alright and only lost due technicalities regarding his IS.

* * *

><p>"So this makes her the class representative, huh?" Ichika said out loud as Houki walked along side him towards the dorm.<p>

He was slightly disappointed on losing, he had gotten so close. It left him with the feeling like when one changes their answer at a multiple choice exam and it turns out that the previous answer they chose was the correct one. Then again, he shouldn't have expected to win when he barely knew anything about IS in the first place.

Ichika glanced at Houki, she seemed to be staring at him intently, "What's with that look?"

Houki looked away for a moment before hesitantly looking him at the eye.

"How should I say this... Are you devastated that you lost?"

Back again was the stammering timid voice that he wasn't used to.

"Well, kind of..."

He wasn't really that intent on becoming a class representative, but to win the match. Cecilia had generally insulted (intentionally or not) Japanese culture and he wanted to prove her wrong about her earlier assumptions. Not only that, he had lost even though he was using his very own sister's weapon to which she used to win the Mondo Grasso. That in itself made him feel horrible.

"S-starting tomorrow, we'll need to include IS training in our schedule."

"Agreed."

He couldn't keep relying on his sister. He needed to become more independent and reliable. That was also another reason to which he started learning Shinsei Tenka in the first place.

Although, even now he hadn't formed an answer that Yuuki would accept

The two walked in silence for a moment, before Houki suddenly stopped.

Ichika looked curiously at Houki for a moment.

"You want me to teach you right?" She asked, her face had a slight pink hue and the stammering she had moments earlier was back.

"Yeah, that's for sure." Ichika agreed, "I feel more comfortable with you than I do with other girls. And since you're Tabane-san's sister, you must be really knowledgeable about IS."

Shinono Tabane was the older sister of Shinono Houki. As he had heard a few days ago, there were only 467 IS cores in circulation around the world. Due to certain circumstances, she refused to make any more and no other countries could replicate the feat.

"Oh, is that right? That's right... that makes sense." For some reason she seemed slightly disappointed, "It can't be helped then."

"Huh?"

Ichika tilted his head in confusion. He could distinctly remember quite a few girls he had met in his life do something similar but he wasn't quite sure what it actually meant. Could it be a girl thing?

"Alright then, I'll teach you." She said, gaining her usual tone of voice. "Make sure you're free after school starting tomorrow. Got it?"

"Got it."

Houki allowed herself a small giggle as she continued to walk onwards back on to the dorm, while Ichika followed suit.

* * *

><p><em>At an Undisclosed Location:<em>

"Hmm... Interesting."

A young woman with long purple hair was typing madly at the computer in front of her.

The young woman was a world renown scientist. She had been the creator of the Infinite Stratos, otherwise known as IS. Even with these credentials, it was hard to take her seriously once one encounters her.

She was wearing what looked like robotic bunny ears after all.

The young woman smiled to herself at the video before her.

Presented upon the screen, was the battle between the England representative and the younger brother of Chifuyu. It was currently replaying the scene when Ichika used the Fold-Out Armor ability of Yukihiro Nigata. That in itself wasn't that surprising since it was the ability of the said weapon. But it was under the circumstances that it was activated that was truly surprising.

The Fold-Out armor ability activated despite the fact that the IS has not reached First Shift. In other words, Ichika had activated the ability when the IS hadn't even 'shifted' to fit him better. One might think that it might be due to the fact that the IS's current form already suited him, but she knew that wasn't the case.

Grinning to herself as she finished a few more calculations on her current project, she muttered, "Let's see if you can continue to surprise me more, Ikkun."

* * *

><p><em>A Few Days Later...<em>

Currently Class 1 was doing hands-on practice with IS. Though this was the case, only those who had their own personal IS could actually demonstrate, namely Ichika and Cecilia.

"With that, let's start practicing some basic IS maneuvers."

Chifuyu was currently on teaching mode and had a white jumpsuit on. Yamada-sensei was behind her supervising the hands-on training session. Everyone else was wearing the basic suit before activating an IS.

Ichika obviously wore something different since he was a male, but the design was basically the same.

They were currently lined up according to their surnames.

"Orimura, Alcott, try flying your IS."

Ichika was a bit taken aback by the sudden call and started to sweat slightly. It wasn't because he was nervous on demonstrating, or he didn't like being the center of attention, it was something more simpler than that.

He barely read the guidebook.

Cecilia on the other hand, was ready, "Understood!" Closing her eyes to concentrate, her blue earring at her left ear glowed a bright blue. In the following moment, her IS, Blue Tears had manifested.

Ichika had watched it intently so he could learn how to perform such an action.

He didn't want to be seen as an idiot again – even though, technically, he was.

"Okay." Ichika attempted to mimic what Cecilia had done, but nothing happened. "Huh?"

"Hurry up and do it." Chifuyu hollered out to him. "A properly trained pilot does not take more than a second to deploy their IS."

_'I really should have read the manual...'_

Ichika held his gloved right hand and concentrated. With what little he read, IS reacted to the thoughts of their users. This was mainly the reason that even similar IS would have notable differences once a the IS is used by a certain person. Though the system would remain the same, but how it develops would be completely different from person to person. So there were obviously no clear cut definition or command on how to control an IS. Though there were a multitude of tips and know-how on how to do so, Ichika hadn't read any of those.

Concentrating as hard as he could, a bright flash alerted everyone that Ichika had summoned his IS. Ichika was once again riding Byaku Shiki. It still had the monotone gray color just like the color of his glove when his IS was in its closed form.

"I did it." He said in relief.

It was more in relief that he didn't look like an idiot in front of everyone again.

"Okay, fly!"

"Yes." Cecilia quickly replied as she flew up with her IS.

Ichika watched her fly up into the sky. She really made it look easy.

"Okay, then..." Attempting to copy her, his flight wasn't as good as he'd like due to the fact that he nearly bumped the edge of the area they were practicing in.

He eventually made it to the air and made to follow Cecilia.

When he had attempted this earlier during the fight, everything was instinctive. But since the situation he was currently in was a lot more lax state – that and he usually forgot things what he did during high tension situations (of course it came back when the situation called for it).

"You're slow!" Came the voice of his sister over the system, "When comparing specs, Byaku Shiki had a higher power output."

"Even if you say that..."

He seriously didn't want to take any chances. And despite that, this was actually his first time piloting an IS that was outside battle. So he thought it'd be better to take it leisurely. He didn't want to crash if he over did something.

"Wasn't it 'imagine a pyramid in front of yourself'?" He had read on the guidebook of course, but he didn't really understand most of the terms or what they referred to, so he gave up after reading five pages of the book. "I don't really understand it, though..."

"It's just using your imagination." Came the voice of Cecilia, who had slowed down to his speed. "Isn't it more effective to find a suitable way for yourself to imagine it?"

"Still... the feeling of flying in the air is still strange in the first place." Ichika replied, "I mean, how can this thing fly in the first place?"

With what little of physics he had learned in middle school, he was pretty sure that something as bulky and heavy as an IS would have trouble flying. It was like an IS practically defied the laws of physics... then again, materializing items sounded quite impossible several decades ago.

"Umm... if it's okay with you, shall I give you some pointers after class?" She said in a rather cutesy voice.

"Huh?"

For some reason that he couldn't fathom, Cecilia was no longer using the tone 'holier than thou' on him. He could say it was akin to some of the girls he had met before. So it pretty much verified the fact (for him) that it was a girl thing (though he certainly did not see any of that from his sister).

"During that time we'll be alon-" She started but was cut-off when another voice spoke up.

"Orimura, Alcott, try performing a sudden dive and coming to a complete halt." Chifuyu called out to them.

"R-roger. In that case, I'll be going first."

Cecilia dived sharply towards the ground. Once she was a certain distance from the ground, she immediately turned upright and landed gracefully.

"Wow... you're really good." Ichika commented after seeing her do the procedure.

Now that they were outside of battle, he could now appreciate the things that Cecilia could do. Everything up till now seemed so easy to do for her.

"O-okay, me too!"

Turning sharply towards the ground, he went at full speed. Just a few moments before he was suppose to turn upright, he remembered something... how do you turn upright?

A crash could be heard for kilometers away.

The end result of his attempt to sky dive was him landing face first towards the crater that he had created himself.

"Ichika!"

Thankfully, his IS prevented him from receiving the full brunt of the crash, but it still didn't completely suppress the pain he would receive.

Once his IS returned to its standby form, he pulled his head out of the ground.

"Ouch... I thought I was going to die..." Ichika said sheepishly.

He had momentarily seen his life flash before his eyes. It was an experience he would hope wouldn't happen again. Which also served to emphasize that he should learn more about IS and his own IS.

"You idiot, what do you think you're doing opening a hole in the ground?" Chifuyu reprimanded from above the crater.

Ichika sat at the ground and rubbed his head, "Sorry."

Houki had also arrived at the top of the crater. She sighed in relief seeing that he was okay but her expression soon turned stern, "Can't you remember what I taught yo-" She was cut off when Cecilia, who had disengaged her IS, pushed her aside as she worriedly went to Ichika.

"Ichika-san are you alright?" Came the worried voice of Cecilia as she rushed to the center of the crater. "Are you injured anywhere?"

Such an action had effectively shocked Ichika. Wasn't she just stating how low he was and how great she was a few days ago? Did he really look that pathetic that he could even garner the care of his much more experienced classmate?

Same thoughts were running through the minds of the girls around him but came to a much different conclusion than he did.

It was quite obvious if you think about it, but Ichika wasn't the sharpest person around. He wasn't very smart either; he could pull through when it counts, but when it came to certain things (such as IS) the person explaining would need to 'dumb' it down for him. Though Ichika has met multiple girls in life (as acquaintances or friends), he could never understand what went through their minds. One second they'd be cold to him and the next they start getting flustered or even worried about him.

It was no surprise that he thought this way since he usually thought of himself as a below average guy (piloting an IS aside). He had unintentionally caused the loss of his sister at an IS tournament a few years back. This had served to lower his self esteem and had resulted to never actually gaining some sort of self pride. The closest he had to self pride was his ability to fight with the sword. Even then, it wasn't much since he hadn't mastered Shinsei Tenka like Yuuki.

"Uh... yeah, I'm fine." Before he could think of anything else, he noticed something with the way she had called out to him, "Eh? Ichika-san?"

When did they get into first name basis?

"That's reassuring, however it would be still be better to let them examine you in the infirmary." She said trying to look a bit timid, "If it's okay, should I come alon-"

"That's not necessary." Houki cut in once she reached the center of the crater. "There's no way you can hurt yourself if you're wearing an IS."

Which was true. Ichika didn't have a scratch on his body even though he practically went full speed head first towards the ground. Of course, he didn't think of that when he was about to crash – any person inexperienced with using an IS, would have felt what he had felt before crashing.

Cecilia stood up and faced Houki with what seemed like mildly contained ire, "Ah, Shinono-san." Her voice was laced with contempt. "Isn't it normal to be concerned about others?"

Houki returned the gaze, "You're one to talk, you wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Well it's better than donning the clothes of a demon."

The two soon got into a glaring match.

Ichika watched it with a confused expression.

_'Why are these two in such bad terms with each other?'_

His lack of understanding regarding the female mind was truly astounding.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Updated within a week of the last one... Even though this is a side fiction, if I get a sudden burst of inspiration, I could type non-stop (though I only powered through this since I really wanted to get to where the action is). Anyway, there's not much change here. The real change would happen two chapters from now. Which is when Ichika recalls the time he had accidentally entered the IS entrance exam.

The reason why I want to get to that point, is that I'll be retelling it from my point of view. Since it was hardly elaborated in both the manga and anime, I would be expanding it to the point that it might take up more than one chapter. So this part would be mostly original.

Oh, and Ichika would still be stupidly dense. That is not to say he would remain like that, but he has ways to go before he would start actually noticing the affections of people around him (it would probably start changing after episode 12 of the anime – since I'll be relying less on canon material from then on).

That said, the next chapter is about ready, and would be posted next week at around the same time.

As a note, this chapter was typed the day I submitted this, so I might be doing corrections on this chapter in the coming days or until someone points something out. I don't have a proof reader after all (or a beta).

Reviews and/or constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, it would help really out with my motivation to write more for this fiction.


	4. Huang Lingyin

_That afternoon..._

"Orimura-kun, congratulations on becoming the class representative!"

With several pops, confetti was popped into the air, further emphasizing the party feeling of the occasion.

The whole Class 1 was currently in the cafeteria.

"Why am I the class representative?"

To Ichika's utmost surprise, his classmates had held a party celebrating the fact that he had become the class representative. He had indeed lost the match for the class representative battle, but Cecilia had surrendered the title to him. He obviously didn't want any pity but he decided to remain quiet until she had explained herself for her decision.

"That's because I stepped down." Cecilia declared, standing up with a bit of pride. She had also taken part on the celebration and was currently seated right next to Ichika while Houki took the other seat next to him, sipping an orange juice. "Well, although you lost the duel, if you think about it, it's only natural. After all I was your opponent."

Back again was her normal prideful attitude.

This unconsciously rubbed Ichika the wrong way, but decided to be civil about it and waited until she finished.

"However, since then, I have reflected on my childish temperament and I allowed you to become the class representative." She said with a smile.

"Wow, Cecilia, you sure know how to act." One of his classmates commented.

"That's right isn't it? Now that we have a boy here, it's fine to give some popularity." Another added.

Ichika wasn't sure whether he should cheer to that or slump in disappointment.

"You sure are popular, huh." Houki muttered after pausing from drinking her juice.

"You think so?"

This only served to make Houki angry as she turned away from him.

"Why are you so ill-tempered?"

Before he could further pursue the matter, a flash of light followed by an audible click, alerted him and Houki about the picture that has been taken.

"Hi, Hi~ This is the Newpaper Club!"

The person in question was a female IS student that was wearing glasses and had her long brown hair tied to a bun behind her.

"Ah, why don't we have Cecilia-chan be in the picture as well?"

"Eh, you mean the two of us?"

"Well,, since you're also a hot topic due to the fact that you own a personal IS."

A personal IS, as Ichika had learned, was a distinguishing factor as it was truly impressive for those who had one. Since there were only 467 IS cores in circulation (since Shinono Tabane refused to make anymore), having a personal IS was truly a rarity.

"It might be good to have a handshake or something."

"Is that so?" Cecilia was ecstatic at the notion. "Umm... Naturally, I'll have a copy of the picture, right?"

"Of course! Okay then, stand up!"

Cecilia stood up while Ichika followed a bit reluctantly at his part. The two then placed a hand shaking gesture as they looked at the camera.

"Ah, please smile more brilliantly." The person with the camera said at Ichika's somewhat shaky smile, "Okay, get closer... Yes, don't be anxious. All right, I'm taking it!"

An audible click signified the fact that the photo has been taken. Though it wasn't exactly the picture that Cecilia would have liked.

The main reason for that was, that before the sound of click, his fellow classmates along with Houki, stood up and took part in the photo.

"Why is everyone else in it?"

Ichika assumed it was because her photo was ruined since it was suppose to be a two-shot that had her as a main focus along with himself.

"Well..."

"We can't let Cecilia have a head start, can we?"

The statement itself had confused Ichika. What exactly did they mean by that?

* * *

><p><em>Later...<em>

Ichika had finished doing his nightly ritual and was set to sleep.

Currently, he was wearing a light blue t-shirt with shorts. Since it wasn't too cold (and he's used to sleeping with such clothing) he was fine with his clothing.

Houki, his room mate, had just shut off the windows and sat at her bed.

"Today sure was fun, wasn't it. I'm glad for you."

The tone seemed to be a bit sarcastic, to which Ichika clearly noticed but decided not pay it any attention.

"But I was worn out too you know. If you were in my position, would you be happy?"

"You're right. I would be happy."

Before he noticed it, a pillow had been thrown at his face.

"What's with you?" Ichika said hotly as he removed the pillow from his face.

"I'm going to change into my sleepwear now, so face the other direction."

Ichika sighed and faced the other direction. Did she have to throw a pillow just to emphasize that point? "If you're only going to change, why don't you do it while I was brushing?"

He didn't hear a response as he heard the wooden board slide to further prevent him from looking at her direction. She clearly didn't trust him, did she? Despite that fact, he couldn't help but feel a bit of trepidation knowing that a girl, who was only a mere feet away from him and only separated by a sliding wooden board, was changing their clothes. He was a boy after all!

_'Okay... think about something else...'_

Trying to meditate and keep his mind off of the fact that a girl is changing adjacent to his bed, he closed his eyes.

Meditation in his case required being in a place with little to no distraction. As he usually meditated in a silent and open field of the training grounds he used to exercise at, he was quite unused to meditating when there is something that a guy, like himself, would undoubtedly be distracted under normal circumstances.

Thus the results were clear to see.

_'Damn it!'_

His attempted meditative state only served to amplify the sound and let his imagination run wild.

Before he could resolve himself to slamming his head to the wall to get his raging hormones down, he heard Houki's voice.

"It's fine now."

He must have been with an intense internal battle for him to not notice the fact that the wooden board had slid open already.

Sitting up at his bed, he looked over to Houki.

She was currently wearing a pink Yukata with a maroon Obi. The way she wore it really accentuated her figure. In other words, it was breathtaking.

Looking over her body, he noticed something.

"Is that a new obi?"

Houki was taken aback by the question, before allowing herself a small smile.

"You sure are perceptive."

"It's only natural, I'm with you everyday after all."

"Is that so? You're watching me every day. I see, I see... All right, let's get to sleep!"

For some reason she sounded disappointed, even though her tone was still rather cheerful.

_'I wonder why is that?'_

Ichika lied down by his bed while Houki shut off the lights.

Normally, once the lights turned off, he would go immediately to sleep. For some reason however, there was a slight tension in the air. This tension kept his eyes wide open and his ears listening intently to any noise.

A few moments later, Houki spoke.

"Ichika..."

"What is it?" He muttered uncertainly.

"Well, umm... What was it? I'm sorry about today. I just got really irritated."

He should have known already, but the years apart had made him impatient and rather insensitive to her usual state of affairs (of course he was also insensitive regarding the feelings of the females around him – but he didn't know that).

"It's fine don't worry about it."

"If that's so... then it's fine. Well then..."

"Yeah, good night."

It was at that point that the tension had finally lifted. Allowing Ichika to fall to sleep.

* * *

><p><em>Following Day...<em>

"The inter-class tournament is coming up, right?" One of his classmates said while they gathered before homeroom.

The Inter-Class Tournament was an event that pitted each class against the other. The fighters would be the class representative. It was also used to showcase the ability of the representatives to the board. As such, it was important for some to perform well so that they'd have a brighter future.

"By the way, did you hear? The class representative for Class Two has changed!"

"Ah, it seems that she was replaced by some transfer student." Another one added.

"Transfer student? At this time of year?" Ichika asked.

It was about three months into the term already. So it was odd for a transfer to happen so late into the first semester.

"Yeah. It's a girl from China."

"Hmph! Could it be that she became wary of my existence and decided to transfer in?" Came Cecilia's rather prideful remark.

Deciding not to answer that, Ichika asked, "What kind of person is she? Is she strong?"

He wanted to see if he would be challenged once again just like when he fought with Cecilia. If anything, it would serve to test his abilities.

"At this point only people from Class One and Four has their own personal IS. So there's nothing to worry about-"

"That information is outdated." A girl's voice cut in.

Ichika looked over at the door and noticed a familiar girl with twin-tails.

"The class representative of Class Two also has a personal IS." The girl said with a cockiness that was reminiscent of a certain representative of England. "You can't win that easily."

Ichika blinked.

He blinked once again to make sure his eyes weren't tricking him.

"Rin?" Ichika stood up from his seat, "You're Rin, right?"

"Yes, I am the representative candidate for China, Huang Lingyin."

Huang Lingyin, or as Ichika called her, Rin, was another childhood friend of Ichika. She had transferred to his school just after Houki had left. She was of Chinese descent, and it was due to that heritage, that many kids would pick on her but Ichika had stood up for her. Ever since then, they had been good friends. She eventually left before his last year at middle school, and that was the last he had seen of her, that is, until today.

"Today, I came to declare war!"

Everyone took the news differently.

Houki and Cecilia looked curiously at the newcomer wondering what her relationship was with Ichika as the two seemed to know each other.

While the other students soon chattered among themselves with the development.

"That's the transfer student from Class Two?"

"The representative candidate for China?"

Cecilia had a worried expression. "Who's that? She seems close to Ichika-san."

Those were the exact same thoughts that Houki had.

Ichika on the other hand had trouble containing his laughter.

"Rin, what's with trying to act cool? It seriously doesn't suit you."

Having known her at middle school, he could compare with his past experience and react accordingly. In this case, Rin's disposition totally conflicted with her past behavior resulting to his comical view with what she did.

"Wh-Why are you saying something like that?"

***Bonk***

A fist had impacted Rin's head from behind.

"What was that for?"

Rin turned around sharply before her expression of anger earlier, had changed to one of shock.

"It's now time for brief homeroom period." Chifuyu said.

"Chi-Chifuyu-san..."

Ichika couldn't quite understand it, but Rin had always been a bit intimidated by his sister. True, he himself was intimidated by his own sister at times, but she had been the only one out of his close friends who was actually obviously (in his eyes anyway) scared of Chifuyu.

"Call me Orimura-sensei. Go back to your class, you're being a bother."

"Sorry."

Chifuyu walked past her into the class room.

"I'll come again later! Don't run away, Ichika!"

With that, Rin left towards her class room.

"So she's a representative candidate, huh..."

* * *

><p><em>Later...<em>

"I was really surprised that you were Class Two's transfer student. I wish you could have contacted me before hand."

It was currently lunch time, and Ichika was right behind Rin at the cafeteria line.

"If I had, it would have ruined our dramatic reunion, wouldn't it?"

Ichika tilted his head in confusion. How would it be dramatic with the way she entered? If it was dramatic, shouldn't she have reacted when he recognized her instead of brushing him off? What was her definition of dramatic reunion anyway?

Shaking his head off those stray thoughts he thought back to the encounter this morning.

"Are you still afraid of Chifuyu-nee?"

"Th-that's not true... I just can't handle her well, that's all."

Even Ichika could tell that she was lying.

"Here's your ramen." The cook said, placing a bowl of ramen at Rin's tray.

"You still like ramen, as always." She would always chose to eat ramen whenever they hang out at middle school. So it would be a surprise if she had suddenly grown to dislike it. "It's been around a year, hasn't it? Have you been doing well?"

"I've been fine. Rather than that, you should get injured or sick some time."

That had always been her comment whenever he asked anything that pertained upon a person's well being. It wasn't because she meant him ill will, but because he always showed a strong outlook of unwavering strength. Even in middle school he had never got sick that he had to be bedridden nor did he show any sort of _weakness_. In a sense, it made her feel inadequate.

"What kind of wish is that?"

Ichika and Rin took a seat at one of the tables near the window.

"So, when did you become the representative candidate?" Ichika inquired.

The last time that they had conversed online, she had said nothing regarding becoming an IS representative candidate. Although this may be pertaining to the fact that Ichika really didn't care about IS as it normally didn't apply to a male person's life, even though Ichika's own sister was practically a legend regarding IS.

"I was even more surprise when I saw you on the news."

As the only male IS user, his name was known throughout the world. It was no surprise that she found out without him even telling her of that fact.

"Well, I never did imagine that I'd end up in a place like this."

Like everyone else, he had been thoroughly surprised at the turn of events that day.

"I heard that you operated an IS during the entrance exam. How did it turn out like that?"

"How you ask? Well..."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

As promised, here's the next chapter.

As some may notice, I used Rin's actual Chinese name when I introduced her. From here on in, (unless she introduces herself to someone new), I'll be referring to her as 'Rin'.

From what I've noticed... I really need to fix Ichika's apparent 'denseness'. It really rubs me the wrong way even though I find oblivious protagonists in a harem genre anime a funny thing. So when I start my original arcs, I'll probably have Ichika's character development as a major part of those arcs.

Anyway, the next chapter(s) would be a flashback on Ichika's past. I'll be posting a reminder after the next chapter but it'd be best I state it out now: not everything seen in the flashback would actually be told to Rin and those listening.

The reason I'm going out of my way to lay out this flashback is to give some people an idea to what Ichika had experienced before the series' start.

The next chapter might be out next week... though maybe not since I have to focus on my other works, not to mention exam week is coming up. This is a side fiction after all.

Thanks to anonymous reviewer 'Flame' for pointing out an error at Chapter 3!

As always, reviews – be it a simple comment or something as helpful as constructive criticism – would be really helpful!


	5. Disappearance

_A Year Ago..._

"Too slow!"

A girl with long white hair delivered a blindingly fast attack towards her opponent's right leg and left arm in quick succession with her shinai. Her opponent tried to defend, but it was clear he wasn't as fast as her.

His frantic attempt to defend the attacks had his shinai flying over his head as the attack of the girl impacted the point of target.

The hits made her opponent stagger for a moment before falling to the ground holding his left arm.

The opponent in question was Ichika Orimura. Sweat was seeping through his training clothes despite the cool morning breeze.

The girl approached him and lend him a hand. Ichika took it gratefully as she pulled him back up.

"You did well though. You've lasted fifteen seconds this time." The girl complimented.

Even though Ichika had his breathing labored, the girl didn't even look the slight bit winded, and she had been working with him all morning!

"Did well, you say... but I could hardly call fifteen seconds good progress."

Ichika was a slight bit peeved that his sparring matches hadn't gone even longer than fifteen seconds. There were two types of spars: The training spar and the battle spar. The training spar served to correct his form, while the battle spar is an simulation of actual battle. His sensei was truly a monster when it came to battle spars – and she's always holding back.

"Well, I'd say it's a mark improvement compared to five months ago." She commented lightly.

Five months ago, he didn't even last five seconds and he was already down on the floor, facing the earth beneath their feet. At that point, he couldn't even read a single strike she sent at him even though he had a background on kendo and had experienced his sister's 'spartan training'.

"I guess."

Yuuki Amakusa was Ichika's sensei on the way of Shinsei Tenka. She was about a year older than Ichika and had long white hair reached all the way up to her waist. Her voice was soft and her expression was what one would compare to a well mannered woman. At first glance, one would never associate her to sword fighting, let alone be a master of one of the most deadliest sword style. In training, she had a commanding presence that rivaled his own older sister despite her somewhat soft voice.

In a way, Ichika felt that Yuuki would be his ideal person; someone to become and emulate.

The two sat in silence for a moment.

The last two few months had him learning the way of the Shinsei Tenka style. It was clear to say that the style itself was completely different to anything he had learned or seen. Even with a shinai, the style can create such grievous injuries, that Yuuki had never gone all out on him on training matches. Instead, she demonstrated it on inanimate objects. It was plain to see why she made him swear that he wouldn't use the style unless it was a dire situation.

Ichika looked towards Yuuki who had a slight look of melancholy.

"Is there anything wrong Yuuki?"

The two had been with each other for a whole two years now. Yuuki could tell with how his body moves when he's in a certain state of mind. One particular example is when Ichika starts to clench and unclench his left hand, she could discern it as he was becoming overconfident. Likewise with Ichika, he could tell if something troubled Yuuki even though a normal person wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

"Huh? Oh, sorry. I spaced out there." Yuuki said sheepishly.

"I was asking if there's anything wrong. You looked a bit troubled a moment ago."

Yuuki looked evasively for a moment before looking up towards the now blueish sky.

"Hey, Ichika."

"Hm?"

"Promise me that you won't stop practicing even if I'm gone."

"Huh?"

Ichika was a bit taken aback by the statement. Somehow it gave him a bad feeling.

"Never mind... Let's head back." She turned around and walked towards the path to town.

He didn't know what made him do it at that time, but he felt that he had to do it no matter what. If it would lift her feelings if he promised it, then he would do so.

"I promise." Ichika declared.

Those words made Yuuki turn around sharply as if she misheard him.

"I promise to keep practicing." Ichika repeated, "I won't forget."

His words made Yuuki blush unbeknownst to him.

Revealing a heartfelt smile, "Thank you. Let's meet up here... again later."

The two walked back towards the town before the sun had fully risen.

* * *

><p><em>At School...<em>

"Hey Ichika!"

Ichika lifted his head lazily from his desk. A friend of his with long red hair had just sat a seat adjacent to him.

It was currently the last day of school and he had just finished his usual morning nap.

Class usually started at around 8AM and ended at around 3PM. Since his training started at 3:30AM up to 5:45AM, he usually spent the remaining hours procrastinating on his schoolwork or sleeping. Due to the fact that it's the last day of classes, he could leisurely sleep without any stress to follow.

"I can't believe you're still falling asleep in class! I mean it's the last day of school!" His red headed friend exclaimed in disbelief. "Does your sister really push you to that extent?"

Then again, that statement itself was somewhat ironic since Dan's own sister Ran, could make him cower just by one glare.

"It's not like that Dan..." Ichika mumbled before his head slammed down to his desk with a resounding thud.

Dan Gotanda is a close friend of his and they usually hang out at his family's restaurant or just playing video games at his house. But due the fact that he had started learning Shinsei Tenka recently, he barely had enough time to hang out with his friends. When they had inquired as to why he was busy all the time, he just fibbed that his sister had started his 'training' once again (anyone who knew Chifuyu would probably be to afraid to inquire as to the reason that Ichika had no time left to hang out – which of course resulted to the fact that no one found out about his training with Yuuki).

"Man, I'm glad that vacation is coming for you. I'd hate to think what would happen to you if this kept up."

Ichika silently agreed with his sentiment. He didn't know how much longer he could keep up with will power alone. He didn't dare complain to Yuuki since he was the one that had asked for this anyway.

Before Ichika could drift to dreamland once again, the door slid open alerting him to the arrival of his teacher.

* * *

><p><em>That Afternoon...<em>

A shinai landed sharply towards the ground, followed by Ichika's worn out body. His breathing was labored, and it didn't look like he'd recover any time soon.

"Ichika, you've got the execution of the style down... but your timing is horrible!"

Though it was a reprimand, it didn't entirely felt demanding. But with the way her soft voice said it, it made him feel bad nonetheless.

Yuuki had been training Ichika on how to defend using the Shinsei Tenka style. Though the style in question focused on devastating attacks; that is not to say that it has no defensive capability. The Shinsei Tenka utilizes subtle movements of the sword that can be quickly used to chain into inescapable counter attacks.

Ichika had got the main forms of the style down before they started battle training. Though that was the case, he still hadn't been able to master the application of such style in quick brutal battles. Yuuki was trying to beat it to him so he could react instinctively with the styles that she had taught him. She already knew that Ichika best learned when doing something rather than doing a verbal explanation.

"Sorry Yuuki... Give me a second to recover."

Ichika took several calming breaths. Once the pounding within his chest had reached a tolerable level, he sat up and picked up his shinai.

"Alright, again!"

Once Ichika had gone to the batoujutsu form, Yuuki rushed forward and delivered a quick vertical slash.

Ichika had anticipated this and immediately side-stepped to the left. He knew Yuuki would chain the attack to _something_ so he kept his eyes on... her.

Instead of paying attention to the weapon of the attacker, Ichika had learned that it was best to look for outward signs from a person's body. The slight tightening of muscles or even twitches of eyebrows told a huge amount to what an opponent would do next. These minor signs, serve as warning signals that told him what the opponent might do.

This of course might be difficult to do to someone who hesitated (since their muscles might twitch then stiffened as they try to think of something else to do), but to someone as experienced as Yuuki, this tactic worked the best.

Once Ichika noticed that there were no outward sign from her arms, Ichika ducked right before Yuuki kicked her shinai towards Ichika's head while she held onto it. Since she held onto the shinai, it went through a perfect arc – if Ichika hadn't ducked, he would have lost his head in a real battle.

Yuuki fought using her whole body, be it her legs, head or shoulders, there is none she wouldn't use in a battle. As such, her fighting style served to educate Ichika that battles aren't like some organized martial arts battle that certain attacks wouldn't be used. Anything is fair game in a real life or death battle.

This was also the reason why Yuuki had trained him physically for the first few months before teaching him anything regarding the way of Shinsei Tenka.

Ichika took his chance and performed the first form of Shinsei Tenka.

"Shinsei Tenka First Creation..."

Releasing his shinai from his makeshift scabbard (which was his left hand), he attempted to deliver sharp and quick slashes towards what he perceived as Yuuki's blind spot.

"...Enveloping Dusk!"

Enveloping Dusk was the first technique of Shinsei Tenka. It was a technique that delivered multiple attacks at the opponent's blind spots in a matter of a few seconds. These blind spots are the spots that the opponent wouldn't normally be able to guard under the circumstances they were currently in. So in the hands of a master, such a technique was unavoidable.

Ichika was a great pupil, he had learned nearly all of the Shinsei Tenka forms in such a short time. But Yuuki was a master of Shinsei Tenka, furthermore she had already anticipated such an attack.

She weaved in and out of Ichika's slashes with the grace of a dancer. The last slash of Ichika had Yuuki crouching low and her left foot scraped the ground sending warning signals towards Ichika's head.

_'That movement!'_

Yuuki's shinai swung towards her left hand, signifying that she had entered battoujutsu form.

Ichika immediately entered the same form by using the momentum of his failed slash to spin him back into place and forcing even more momentum to the next attack he was going to perform.

He couldn't allow this attack to connect. He can't keep losing at the move that had constantly caused his quick loss by her hand.

Gritting his teeth in grim determination, Ichika took a quick step forward while on his battoujutsu form just as Yuuki released her shinai from her left hand.

In the next step, it was over.

Ichika's shinai was still held within his right hand.

Yuuki's shinai was still held within her right hand.

Moments later, a soft thud was heard and Ichika was down on the ground, unconscious. His face showing a calm smile.

Yuuki slowly turned towards her unconscious pupil. She allowed herself a small smile as she dragged his unconscious form towards one of their makeshift benches.

"You did it Ichika."

Her voice was soft and her audience was unconscious, but she didn't quite care.

Ichika had lost. There was no doubt about that.

His last move however, had showed that Ichika had grown.

Yuuki's hand traveled towards a crease at her right shoulder.

This was where Ichika's move had hit.

It wasn't much, and was definitely not fatal. But it was touched nonetheless.

This would have normally meant nothing, but Yuuki had not intended to get hit even by just a little by that attack. In fact, she hadn't anticipated the movement at all.

In the last moment of the battle, Ichika had used the tip of his shinai's handle to impact the first strike of Yuuki's attack. The attack of Yuuki was usually a two move finisher, by canceling the first attack, Ichika created a small opening for himself to counter. Ichika had known that he couldn't hope to defend the second slash with the way he is now, so he took his chances.

Though she had won, this was the first time that Ichika had shown a chance of actually grasping a solid hit. It was miniscule, but as the sensei, she could nonetheless feel extremely proud at what her pupil had achieved.

"Continue to practice Ichika, and when we meet again..."

She blushed momentarily before she allowed herself to continue, "... I hope you would release me from the chains that bind me."

Ichika didn't know it then, but that would be the last he heard of Yuuki Amakusa.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

I honestly thought that I won't be updating this week at all...

And yes, this part is the part that Ichika would have left out during his recounting on how he accidentally went to an IS entrance exam. To those that don't know, battoujutsu is the form of which the sword is on its sheath state. I also used this chapter to give more background on who Yuuki Amakusa is. She's important to how Ichika has developed in this story (but she won't actually appear in the main story line until much later).

This is part 1 of the flashback, the second part will be concluded at the next chapter.

I'll be taking a break from this fan fiction for a while to gather my thoughts and work on my other written work. I don't know when I'll resume this work, but depending on the reviews I might resume this work faster than I originally predicted.

Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome and greatly appreciated!


	6. IS: StartUp

**9/30/11 Edit: Okay, I've edited this chapter to be a bit more in the canon side of the IS world mechanics. As always, I'm open to corrections and constructive criticism.**

* * *

><p><em>A Week Later...<em>

It was around four in the morning.

The sky was painted a dark blue and the cool morning breeze enveloped the vicinity.

Normally, most people would be asleep at this time. But there was a teenage boy already out and about at this time. He was wearing a jogging pants and a long sleeve t-shirt to defend against the cold morning breeze. Even though it was a calm morning, the expression the young boy had was one of anxiety.

It wasn't because of a test or project like most teenagers his age would fret about. Nor was it the entrance exam he was set to take this morning.

It was because a particular person that he had regularly met in the last year and a half was missing.

The person had been missing for quite some time now and the only thing he had to remember her of, was the katana that he had found at the clearing where they usually met for training and her teachings.

_'Where are you Yuuki?'_

The people who had known of Yuuki only thought of her disappearance as a sign that she had moved away. But why hadn't she informed him?

So despite what everyone had said, he was still worried for Yuuki's well being.

The boy in question was Ichika Orimura.

He was currently seated at the clearing where they used to train.

The clearing was surrounded by a multitude of trees. If one wasn't familiar with the surroundings, they could easily get lost. So the area itself was a sort of secret between him and Yuuki. And since they used the clearing for most of their training, the ground itself held a lot of marks of battle training. Nevertheless, it was a pretty clean and quiet spot.

Sighing to himself, Ichika performed his usual morning exercises. He continued to do these exercises despite that Yuuki was no longer there to watch over him. He had promised after all. Though it had a less energetic feel since he was distracted.

If Yuuki saw him now, he would surely be reprimanded.

* * *

><p>"Don't play with your food!"<p>

A sharp knock to Ichika's head reminded him of the fact that he was eating breakfast.

"Aw..."

Rubbing the back of his head, he noticed that he barely ate any of the food in his plate.

"You have your entrance exam today to the high school you wanted to go." Chifuyu said as she cleaned her plate at the kitchen sink, "You've got to be focused if you want to pass that entrance exam."

The high school that Ichika had wanted to enter was a local high school near to their current home. The entrance exam was taking place in a Community Center since the school in question was ongoing summer renovations to prepare for the new term.

There were multiple schedules as to when the entrance exam for the particular high school Ichika was going to. Chifuyu had decided that he should take the first one (which was a whole two months before the start of the high school in question's first term) since he'd probably lose whatever knowledge he learned during the course of the summer break.

"Sorry, Chifuyu-nee."

Returning to his meal, he noticed his sister looking at him critically.

"Is there anything wrong?" He inquired after taking a bite out of his meal.

Chifuyu took a seat opposite of him after she cleaned her dishes.

"Something is bothering you." It was more of a statement than a question.

Chifuyu, like Yuuki, could read him like a book. She could easily see if something is bothering him. Ichika had always wondered if she knew of the fact that he was learning Shinsei Tenka, since she was usually very perceptive with things happening to him.

Ichika played around with the notion of informing his sister about Yuuki disappearance for a moment. It would certainly be helpful to know if his sister knew anything about it.

In the end, he shook his head. This was his problem. He shouldn't involve his sister over it.

"Nothing Chifuyu-nee. It's probably just stress."

It wasn't exactly a lie.

Chifuyu continued to look at him critically. Eventually she sighed and stood up to leave for the living room.

"Finish up your breakfast so we could head towards the Community Center."

Ichika nodded as he began to eat his food once again.

* * *

><p><em>An hour later...<em>

Ichika had just been dropped off by his sister at the Community Center.

She said that she will pick him up once again after the designated end time of the entrance exam.

The Community Center was packed, with a multitude of teenagers his age entering it. This only served to verify the fact that there was more than one event taking place within the Community Center today.

Ichika's mind however was in a haze.

It surely wasn't a good sign since he needed to be focused for his entrance exam, but he still felt conflicted as to what had happened to Yuuki. It still continued to worry him.

When he finally regained a semblance of concentration, he noticed that he was deep within the Community Center walking aimlessly.

"Wait, where's the Entrance Exam?"

There was not a soul in sight. The inane chattering of before had become an eerie silence. There wasn't even foot steps echoing throughout the halls, and not a single person was in sight.

Glancing at his watch, he noticed that there was only five minutes till the start of the exam.

"Crap! Get a hold of yourself!"

Shaking his head of his worry for Yuuki for the time being, he began to frantically search the Community Center halls. The silent halls only served to increase the trepidation he was currently feeling.

Eventually, he came upon a double set of doors that had a sign 'Entrance Exam Ongoing.'

Ichika gave a sigh of relief. He had found the entrance exam door a minute before the start.

Had Ichika actually read the board in front of the Community Center that informed what events were currently going on, he would have realized that there were other entrance exam taking place at the same time.

Opening the door, he noticed that it seems like it was an IS exam.

_'Wrong room?'_

He couldn't afford to go wandering aimlessly again so he approached one of the supervisors of the IS exam.

"Umm... Excuse me..."

"Another one? You're late." The supervisor said without looking up from the clipboard she was currently looking over, "Go over there and put on one of the training IS so we can begin the test."

"But that wasn't what I-"

"I'm busy right now, so go over there and put on the IS!"

"Y-yes!"

Ichika gave up trying to communicate with her and decided to go over the training IS. For all he knew it could be some sort of test for the high school he planned on going to.

Of course, had Ichika had actually looked around, he would have noticed that he was the only male in the whole room.

The training IS he was currently facing was like most others in the room. It was the simple mass produced model that he had seen quite often in TV.

_'Now, how do you put one of these on?'_

It seemed like he would have to climb on and try it on.

Dropping his bag to the side, he placed himself on the training IS until everything fitted.

_'Huh, it fits...'_

Normally, once a male tries on an IS, it would show no response and be awfully difficult to put on. But none of those happened.

The IS began to glow, and the screen optimization appeared before him as it shifted to default settings.

_'So this is what Chifuyu-nee feels when she's piloting an IS.'_

Soon enough, he could distinctly feel that the controls become lighter, allowing him to actually stand with the IS.

"What the - !"

One of the supervisors that was currently on an IS supervising the other IS examinees had finally noticed that he had tried on the IS.

"Oi! What are you doing!"

Ichika was taken aback when the supervisor started to rush at him with inhuman speed.

He would have been surprised, but his training with Yuuki had made him used to seeing speeds faster than the one the supervisor was currently going at. In essence, the supervisor might as well have been jogging at him. Side stepping, the supervisor slammed hard to the adjacent wall and was promptly knocked out.

Ichika went to her side and crouched down.

"Are you alright?" He asked worriedly.

"Impossible!"

Mutterings were currently going on around him.

"A male can use an IS?"

"Male's can't use IS, right?"

Ichika had no way knowing at this point, but his life had just gotten more complicated.

* * *

><p><em>Present Day...<em>

"Several things happened after that. And in the end, I was placed in this school."

Ichika had conveniently left out the part about Yuuki and Shinsei Tenka. He had to keep it a secret after all.

"Hee~ That's a strange story."

It was at that moment that Houki and Cecilia, who was seated behind them, stood up and walked over to their table.

"Ichika, it's about time you give us an explanation." Houki said as she slammed her hands down at the table Rin and Ichika were eating along with Cecilia.

"That's right, Ichika-san." Cecilia agreed, "Are you... g-g-going out with this person?"

This time it was Rin's turn to stammer, "N-n-n-n-not really, we're..."

Ichika wasn't quite sure what they were implying but it seems like a misunderstanding was taking place. "That's right. We're only childhood friends." He replied without a hint of embarrassment that was present when Rin was asked about her relationship with him. For reasons unknown to him, Rin glared at him, "Is something wrong?"

Rin immediately turned away, "Nothing!"

"Childhood friends..?" Houki muttered.

"Oh, that's right. You transferred in at the same time that she transferred out." Ichika realized. Deciding to formally introduce the both of them, he turned towards Rin, "She's Shinono Houki. I told you about her before, right? Houki is my first childhood friend, and you are my second childhood friend."

"First..."

Houki was visibly relieved at the way Ichika introduced her.

"Oh, I see." Rin said, "Nice to meet you. I hope we can get along." The tone however, seemed to contain a sort of aggressive note.

"Yeah, me too."

Cecilia, who had been watching the interaction for a while now, decided to make herself known once again by coughing.

"Don't forget that I'm here, too. I'm Cecilia Alcott, the representative candidate student from England." She introduced herself before continuing in a tone that Ichika was all quite familiar with, "The other day we had an intense battle to decide the position of class representative."

Midway upon Cecilia's introduction, Rin turned towards Ichika.

"I hear you're Class One's representative."

"Yeah, I hear you are the class representative for Class Two." Ichika said, somewhat ignoring whatever Cecilia's long explanation was.

"If you're fine with it, how about I watch over your practice for IS piloting?"

"That's be a great help."

Ichika was glad at this. He doubt he could get everything down before the IS class representative tournament, so it'd be helpful if he got help from more people.

"Hey! Are you listening?"

It seems that Cecilia had finally realized that neither of the people whom she was talking to, was actually paying any attention.

"Sorry, I'm not interested in you." Was Rin's blunt reply.

"You sure have said it!"

"Teaching Ichika is my job!"

"You're in Class Two aren't you? We won't receive help from the enemy!"

"I'm talking with Ichika right now. Would people who aren't involved please leave?"

Ichika blinked at the scene unfolding in front of him. Why are all three of them in such bad terms with each other? They've just met, so they can't all be forming a hatred of one another. He also doubted it was because of the upcoming representative match. It wasn't like Rin after all to sabotage his training progress. Although, he had to admit that the way she was dismissing the two, could really rub others the wrong way.

"Same goes for you. You just pop out of nowhere. How impudent!"

"I didn't just pop out of nowhere. I've been with Ichika longer than you."

"If you're going to point that out, I've known Ichika earlier than you have. As for our relationship, we've had many meals at my house."

"In that case, same goes for me." This brought shocked expressions to Cecilia and Houki, "Ichika would often come to my place to eat. Ever since grade school that is."

Houki faced Ichika with a disbelieving look, "Ichika, what the hell is this? I've never heard of this!"

"Neither have I!"

"Eh?" Ichika was a bit surprised at the way they were taking it. "I often went to the Chinese restaurant Rin's family owns." Surely, there wasn't anything wrong with that?

"Oh? It's just a restaurant." Houki visibly relaxed at this.

"If it's only a restaurant, then there's nothing odd with it." Cecilia added as she too, was relieved by this.

Ichika was confused. What did they interpret it as anyway? Then again, he hadn't mentioned that Rin's family owned a restaurant. When he tried to think of the alternative possibility of what they were thinking, he came up blank. How can one misunderstand it anyway?

Ichika turned towards Rin, oblivious to the fact that Rin had actually wanted the misunderstanding, "Is your father doing well?"

"Oh, he seems to be fine."

_'Seems?'_ Ichika wasn't quite sure how to take the news. Should he be worried? Or is Rin merely distracted with the way she said it?

The bell rang signifying the end of lunch period.

Rin stood up with her tray, "So then, Ichika. After school, when it's about time for your practice to finish, I'll be going to your place. Make sure you're free."

"Okay."

* * *

><p>"Shinono-san, what in the world is this?" Cecilia asked.<p>

Right now, Ichika had his IS on its active form and with his sword drawn while Houki was wearing a training IS.

"I got permission to use the trainer."

Trainers, are IS that has a limited IS core. Limited, since it can't function as efficiently as personal IS. This is ude to the fact that it was created for the sole purpose of matching everyones capabilities. As a personal IS shifts into something more suited for the pilot (making it, in essence, a machine that only they can operate efficiently), a training IS musn't have this capability or else some people won't be able to learn how to properly use an IS if the features don't suit them.

"Starting today, I will be participating using this."

"Uchigane... a mass production model from Japan." Cecilia commented.

Uchigane is a trainer IS that looked a lot like a huge samurai battle armor. Hence the reason why its only weapon was a katana – which suited Houki just fine.

"I never imagined that you could get permission to use it so easily."

Despite the fact that trainer IS is a mass produced model, it didn't mean that it was cheap. As it still had the absolute barrier and the ability to fly and fight like normal IS, aside from the fact that it can't go to First Shift, it couldn't use some special moves that personal IS could use (one such example, is a One-Off Ability). So normally, getting the trainer for practice outside of lessons is difficult to achieve.

Houki tested its movements, after a moment, she materialized the weapon of Uchigane.

"Well then, Ichika. Let's begin."

"Y-yeah." Ichika went to the basic kendo form.

He was a bit nervous at this. With the past few years, he had been solely practicing the Shinsei Tenka style. So shifting to the old kendo style, would be quite difficult. He just hoped he could act it out and prevent himself from acting or reacting according to the Shinsei Tenka style.

"W-wait a minute! The one practicing with Ichika-san will be me!" Cecilia activated her IS and in a flash of light she was on her Blue Tears.

_'Wait, two opponents?'_

He wasn't really disturbed by the notion of fighting two opponents, but hiding his skill would be a lot more difficult since his body would reacting according to how it was taught. If it was only one opponent, then he might be able to limit his reactions, but now that there was two, he might react before even realizing that he did.

"Now, Ichika, let's start practice." Houki said ignoring the fact that Cecilia had just joined the fray.

"I'll be your opponent, Ichika-san." Cecilia said apparently ignoring Houki.

"Uwa..."

He had a feeling this won't end well.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Whew... Second Semester has already begun for me, and I'm still nowhere near to reaching my 50,000 words start up limit for my supposed new fan fiction (that and I've been too busy programming and playing video games to have any time to brainstorm). Sigh...

Due to the fact that I felt the second part of the flash back was a bit too short, I combined it with the supposed next chapter.

The next chapter would be the result of Ichika's training with Cecilia and Houki, and the latter's confrontation with Rin. Again, I don't know when this chapter will come out, but reviews _might_ make it come more earlier.

Anyway, please review – be it constructive criticism, corrections, or a simple comment – it would be really helpful!


	7. Hidden Meanings

The sky was painted a deep dark blue.

The sun had long set, yet Ichika had only just finished his training.

Ichika was lying on the ground breathing heavily. His IS was on its inactive form, so he was lying on the cold hard ground.

He wasn't exactly tired due to the sparring, but with what they made him do. Due to the fact that he didn't quite get their explanations regarding IS movements or theories, he had to repeat several movements and procedures again and again until he got it right. That in itself served to tire him out.

There was also the fact that by forcefully holding back, and in occasion, stopping himself from performing a move, made his muscles ache at the strain. It's basically like swinging a bat as hard as you can, but had to stop mid way since you noticed it was going to be a ball.

"Let's call it a day for now."

"Yeah..." Ichika agreed in between breaths.

"This is what you get for not training well, enough."

Well, you can say he didn't train well enough – in kendo and IS that is. Pretending and making himself bad at fighting with the sword was a lot more difficult than he expected, not to mention the fact that he was extremely bad at following their explanations.

"It would have been easier if you explained it better." Ichika complained.

"Ichika-san, see you later." Cecila said as she walked out of the arena.

Houki on the other hand looked at him.

"What are you doing? We're going back to our room."

Ichika grimaced. He wasn't really ready to get up from his position.

"Please go on ahead of me. I can't move yet."

"Can't be helped then. I'll be using the shower first."

"Okay."

As soon as Houki was out of sight, Ichika hopped to his feet.

He was still tired but he had quickly recovered to the point that he could at least stand on his own two feet. He had mastered the trick on recovering fast after every practice session he went through. He had to have learned it if he didn't want to raise his sister's suspicion whenever he went to practice in the early morning with Yuuki.

_'I'm getting out of shape...'_

Though he continued to practice ever since Yuuki's disappearance, he didn't practice it with the same vitality as before. So his stamina had gone down quite a bit. There was also the fact that he didn't quite practice in the last few months since he came to IS Academy - he feared that someone might see him practice.

Clenching his gloved hand, he looked over at the starry skies.

He can't let it continue like this. He can't keep dragging his feet and throwing away everything that Yuuki had taught him. He couldn't just be a burden to his sister either if he's so weak.

"I guess I better practice the way that Yuuki has taught me to." He resolved once he got the chance to do so. He didn't have as much freedom as before since his living quarters was now within school grounds. This meant that he might be seen practicing, and he couldn't let that happen.

After a few stretches, he headed towards the locker room.

He needed to get his clothing before he went back to his dorm room after all.

* * *

><p>Arriving at the locker room, he was taking out his clothing, when he noticed another presence within the room.<p>

Another thing to note about Ichika was his innate awareness of his surroundings. It wasn't as keen as Yuuki's, but he could sense any living thing that enters his range. In a sense, it was extremely acute intuition. His intuition is apparently good enough, that it was about right nearly all the time.

In this case, he noted that his intuition told him the new presence is non-hostile.

"Good work, Ichika!"

Turning towards the presence, it was Rin. She was holding what seemed to be sports drink and a towel on her hand. Had she been watching the whole time? It was a good thing he decided to postpone doing any of the exercises Yuuki had taught him, otherwise she might have found out.

"A sports drink is fine, right?" She handed him the towel to which he gratefully accepted.

"Have you been watching the whole time?"

"Somewhat." She replied vaguely.

Ichika began to wipe the sweat off of his face with the towel. He didn't quite realize it yet, but due to the fact that they were both alone in the locker room, the feeling had become rather uncomfortable – at least, for Rin that is.

"It seems were both alone now." She mused after a moment of silence.

"Oh yeah, it seems so."

Ichika looked at Rin. She seemed to be thinking hard on something.

"Ichika... were you lonely after I left?" She asked facing him.

"Yeah, losing playmates makes someone feel lonelier."

Ichika knew it all too well. Though it was more painful when someone left and he didn't have a way of contacting them or knowing if they were alright.

Again, he didn't quite know what the underlying meaning of that question was.

"Not like that, but... since childhood friends like us, meeting again after a long period of time, we should have lots of things to talk about, right?"

_'Lots of things to talk about, eh?'_

Ichika was a bit nervous about this.

He was a bad liar. He would often fall over his words when he did lie. The only reason that his sister hasn't found out despite the fact that she did tend to question his so called 'morning run', was because Yuuki had thought of it ahead of time and provided a way of 'lying' for him.

He had his suspicions of course, that his sister had an inkling of what he was doing. But he was at least sure that his sister does not know the full extent to which he had trained himself.

"Oh yeah, I forgot something important."

In essence, he could not lie out straight. But if whatever he used as a lie was partially true, then he could at least make it a bit more convincing. Though Yuuki had admitted that she could still tell if he was lying, but at least people who didn't know him wouldn't be able to tell.

Since Rin knows him pretty well, he tried to do the next best thing.

"Did you tell our middle school friends that you came back? They'll be so happy to hear that."

Divert the conversation to something more convenient.

This approach worked better since he usually diverted the conversation to something he truthfully felt he could not possibly lie at. In essence, he wouldn't fall over his words or stammer.

That and the subject he changed it too was what had been bothering him ever since Rin had showed up in IS Academy.

"Not like that! But you see, like..."

_'Crap!'_

"Uh – sorry. I'm getting a bit cold, so I'm going back to my room." Ichika stood up a bit too quickly, "Houki should be done showering by now..."

This apparently confused Rin.

"Showering?" Rin stood up and faced him urgently, "By Houki, you mean that girl from earlier? What's your relationship with that girl?"

"What, you ask?"

What was it with girls asking about his relationship with other girls? Isn't it plain and simple to see?

Ichika had a nagging feeling at the back of his head that this obviously meant something. But whatever it was, continued to escape him.

"She's a childhood friend. My first childhood friend. And you're my second childhood friend."

"Wh-what's being a childhood friend and a shower have in common?"

Oh right, he hadn't actually explained where he was staying in the IS Academy dorm. He guessed it was normal to assume that he would be sleeping alone since this was formerly an all girls school (though theoretically it still is, with him as the sole exception).

"I'm sharing a room with her now."

Once again, Ichika had demonstrated how oblivious he was to the workings of the female mind (or relationships in general), as Rin's face changed from her questioning look to one of shock.

"They said that they couldn't prepare a room for me. That's why."

"So that means you're eating and sleeping together?" Rin inquired suspiciously, which was apparently lost on Ichika.

"Somewhat. But I'm glad it's her. If it was some stranger, I would get all nervous and lose sleep over it."

One of Ichika's many fears when he first came to IS Academy, is the fact that he was afraid he might be ostracized from the other students due to the fact that he was the only male in the school. It was with great relief that he at least had a friend attending the school with him. It was also an added bonus that he happened to be living with someone he knew. If it was someone he knew, he would probably lose a few nights of sleep until he finally got used to living with the person.

Ichika noticed that Rin had quieted down as if she was contemplating something.

"What's wrong?"

"So it's fine if it's a childhood friend, right?"

"Huh?"

"Like I said! If it's a childhood friend, then it's fine, right?"

* * *

><p>Ichika had finished showering and had come out of the bathroom to find Rin and Houki talking to each other. He was currently wearing a light blue t-shirt with green shorts.<p>

"So, since it's like that, switch rooms with me."

Rin had apparently followed Ichika back to his room and was now currently asking Houki on switching rooms with her. Ichika was fine with it, but he was also fine with the current room assignment.

_'Maybe she's losing sleep with having an unfamiliar room mate?'_

That may have been a plausible thought since he himself would lose sleep when sleeping with someone he didn't know, that is, if the person in question was a girl.

It never occurred to Ichika what the true implication of what Rin was doing now, meant.

"Are you kidding me? Why should I?"

Houki had apparently finished taking a bath and was currently wearing her pink yukata.

"Well Shinono-san, you wouldn't want to be in the same room as a man, right?"

It was kind of odd to see one side with a smile on their face while the other side had a scowl. Given the person that Rin was talking too was Houki, Ichika sort of expected this kind of result.

"I – I never said I disliked the current situation. Also, this is a matter between Ichika and me."

Ichika didn't mind who he slept with, but he honestly didn't want to take any sides in this argument lest it earned him the ire of one of them.

"It's fine. I'm a childhood friend too, right?"

Apparently that statement was directed to Ichika.

"Don't put the question on me."

He had hoped that he wouldn't be involved in this conversation. He wouldn't be able to give a straight answer anyway.

"Anyway, I won't change rooms. Now go back to your room!"

Rin stood silent for a moment before, once again, ignoring the person that had been talking to her and directing her attention to Ichika.

"By the way, Ichika, do you remember the promise?"

"Promise?"

"Yes, when we were in grade school..."

"Hey, quit ignoring me!"

Houki had apparently lost her temper.

"If it's come to this - !"

Houki dashed to the side and grabbed hold of her shinai.

"O-oi, you idiot!"

Ichika didn't want any of them hurt or fighting each other. He didn't want friends of his to be enemies of each other.

With that in mind, Ichika moved quickly and placed himself in between them.

Before anyone in the room realized it, Ichika had placed himself in between Houki and Rin, using one hand to grab hold of the descending shinai he used his other hand to grab hold of Rin, knowing she would retaliate someway.

He was apparently surprised when he noticed that the hand that went to grab hold of Rin's arm, felt metal.

_'Huh?'_

Since he had kept his eye on the descending shinai, he didn't quite notice what exactly Rin had done. Taking a look, he noticed that a red IS arm had been materialized over her one arm.

_'Partial Deployment?'_

Partial Deployment is the ability to materialize a part of an IS. It may seem simple, but is in fact rather difficult since one had to take into account how much energy they should use up and which parts of the body should it appear in.

To someone like Ichika, it was a difficult matter to do.

Shaking his head of those thoughts, he finally decided to intervene in the conversation.

"Can't we settle this without fighting? You're both my childhood friend. So I don't want to see both of you fighting."

Houki let her shinai drop to her side, while Rin dematerialized her IS.

Sensing the tension within the air, Ichika decided to change the topic.

"Oh, right. You were talking about a promise. What were you talking about?"

"Oh? Yeah! Well, you see..."

Rin, apparently, was looking a bit timid, a far cry to how she was a while ago. Her face also had a slight pink hue.

"You remember it, right?"

Ichika thought hard. It was a long time ago, so he didn't quite now all of the details.

"You mean that one...? If you got better at cooking, every day you would..."

"Yeah, that one!"

"...treat me to sweet and sour pork, right?"

"What?"

"Like I said, it was a promise to treat me to meals every day, right? I would be so grateful since I live all alone no-"

He abruptly noticed a sudden change within the room, belatedly noticing that a hand was now flying directly towards his cheek.

"What was that for?"

Ichika was now rubbing the red mark at his cheek, courtesy of Rin's slap.

"You're the worst!"

"Eh? Wait, what...?"

"Guys who forget promises made with girls can't be considered men!"

That apparently was a bit of a blow to his already non-existent pride.

"Get bitten by a dog and die!"

"What are you so mad about? I remembered the promise exactly like you said!"

Though it wasn't exactly word for word, Ichika knew that was the basic gist of the promise. Unless of course, there was a hidden meaning.

"You don't remember the meaning of it correctly, the meaning!"

"Then explain it to me. What meaning was there to it? Explain it..."

Houki's, who had been watching the interaction between the two silently, eyes widened as she realized the possible meaning within the promise much faster than Ichika. She herself had made a similar promise to Ichika before she left. The following action of Rin only served to confirm it to her.

"Th-there's no way I can do that!"

Was he suppose to figure it out himself? He was never particularly good on solving things with hidden meaning unless it was something he could (or had to) figure out in a battle situation.

"Then let's make it like this." Rin said after a moment of silence, "For the Inter-Class Tournament next week, the winner get to have the loser consent to one request."

"Fine. If I win you'll explain what was the meaning of that promise."

"You better be prepared!"

With that she promptly left the room.

"Ichika." Houki suddenly spoke up.

"Oh, what?"

"Get kicked by a horse and die."

"What?"

What was it with people wishing him to die lately?

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Well here goes another chapter. I may have missed something or made some errors, I didn't quite proofread this or have anyone else check over it for mistakes.

The following chapter would be the beginning of the Inter-Class Tournament. There isn't going to be a notable change until near the end of the Inter-Class Tournament and before the arrival of Charlotte to IS Academy.

Special thanks to Box-kun for pointing out a mistake on my part (information wise) in the previous chapter. It has been corrected based on his/her input.

And of course a big thank you to those who have been reading my fan fiction. I'm flattered that some of you think so highly of my work. That said, I've still got ways to go and I'll do my best to keep on improving to meet your expectations.

Anyway, reviews – be it constructive criticism or a simple comment – would be really helpful in my motivation to write more and frequently for this story!


	8. Inter Class Tournament I

"I get to fight Rin in the first round?"

Ichika's eye brows involuntarily twitched.

He was currently at the hangar with his IS already deployed.

A screen appeared before him showing the basic stats of Rin's IS.

"Her IS is Shen Long. It's a close quarter type IS, just like your Byakushiki." Came the voice of Yamada-sensei. She apparently was watching the match with his sister from where teacher's would supervise matches like this.

"You'll be fighting a different battle than the one you had with me. Be cautious."

Cecilia and Houki was on the hangar to which he was currently at.

"Don't get all stiff. If you fight like you practiced, then you can win."

_'Like I practiced, huh...'_

In the week before the Inter-Class Tournament, he had three separate training going on. One was the training with Houki and Cecilia (to which he apparently sucked at since he couldn't quite get any of the terms they kept throwing at him, as if expecting him to understand it), another was one-on-one training with his sister (which he learned more about his IS and how to better utilize Yukihira Nigata) and his own training with regards to the Shinsei Tenka style.

If push comes to shove, he'd use some of the teachings he learned from Yuuki (though he obviously won't use any of the techniques).

Ichika turned towards the field and used his Byakushiki to get a close up look on Rin's IS.

Rin's IS apparently wielded a great sword.

_'If I get hit by that, it would probably be quite painful...'_

While he has a higher pain tolerance than most (partially due to the training he received from Yuuki), it didn't mean that he liked getting hurt.

* * *

><p>The arena's roof soon opened up, allowing full air battles to be possible. It also signified that the battle was about to begin.<p>

"Now then, both of you, please move to the designated starting positions." Came the voice of the announcer.

Without another word, Ichika launched to the air from the hangar. This time, it was a lot more graceful than he had done before.

Just goes to show that he did learn something during the week before the tournament.

"If you apologize now, I'll lower the degree of your torture." Came the voice of Rin.

"No need for that. Come at me with full force."

For some reason, that statement didn't come out right.

"Let me tell you this first, Absolute Defense is not perfect. If there's enough force to get through the shield, I can torment you enough so that you won't die."

"I know that."

If there was one thing he learned from his sessions with his sister, is the fact that Yukihira Nigata's ability is extremely dangerous. It had the ability to transfer the Shield Energy of the IS to increase its own power. In doing so, it can easily negate an IS's barrier, hence the reason why the attack was called Shield Nullifying Attack. The attack itself however, is a toned down version of its true capability.

"Now then, both of you," The PA announcer's voice rang out through the whole arena, "Let the match begin."

Ichika immediately materialized his weapon, this time, without utilizing its second feature.

He would only use it once he knows he could get a hit in. Otherwise, it would just be uselessly draining his energy.

Ichika sped through the skies towards Rin.

Rin, who had taken out her weapon, also dashed towards Ichika.

Ichika's first assault missed, as Rin passed by him. Turning quickly, he dashed towards her as the latter did the same.

Their swords clashed, and for a moment, they were in a power battle. The two eventually disengaged.

"You dodged the first attack. I'm impressed."

Ichika had noticed the fact that the huge sword she used made it difficult for him to have maintained that clash moments ago. His sword was lighter than Rin's after all.

"However..."

Rin materialized a second great sword, and rushed towards Ichika.

A combatant with two swords against a combatant with one sword, isn't actually easy to determine who would win. Despite the fact that some believed that two swords is better than one, that's not actually the case. In reality, having two swords would mean that the user would have to split their focus on their two hands just to make sure they don't mess up. A user with one sword could create more forceful strikes since they can use both hands to deliver more power. So a combatant with two swords doesn't focus on power attacks, rather, they focus on attacking openings made by strikes of one sword.

The two swords were never meant to hit the opponent at the same time. They were meant to create more openings that could have never been utilized by a user with one sword; overwhelming the opponent through the number of things they needed to avoid. That is, of course, the user of the two swords was a master.

Ichika blocked each one of the attacks, keeping both of his hands on his sword.

The attacks were simple enough to guard, showing that Rin was no means a master of using two swords. The problem lies however, at the weight of the attacks.

She apparently overcame the problem of having two swords meant lower power.

Two swords user only had lower power when compared to single sword users when they used similar swords in the first place.

Rin was using two great swords, whose weight made up for the lost power. Such a case shouldn't really have affected the outcome of a normal battle since the weight of the sword serves a huge handicap to the user. But she was on an IS, which meant that the weight meant next to nothing.

Ichika who was a lot more of a competent sword fighter due to his training on the use of Shinsei Tenka could have exploited a multitude of openings created by a two sword user, but the heavy weight of the weapon prevented him from taking advantage of it.

It was due to these factors that Ichika couldn't perform perfect counterattacks that would end the battle.

_'What do I do...'_

Ichika dashed towards Rin and tried to slash her, but was promptly avoided. She then countered by attempting to bring down both of her swords at him. Ichika could vaguely notice that Cecilia was shouting over the radio connection about something about a turn that she had taught him, but he couldn't let his guard down in a situation like this. Ichika flew to the side to avoid the descending swords.

Rin combined her great sword into one by connecting the handles onto one another. Once she swung it around her to test its mobility, she dashed once again towards Ichika.

The new attack tactics had Ichika reduced to dodging so he could better gauge how the attack worked.

He couldn't afford to be reckless in a situation like this.

Backing off for a moment he calmly observed Rin.

_'At this rate, it's a matter of who wears out first.'_

It had been a smart idea on his part that he didn't start out with activating Yukihira Nigata's ability. Right now, it was still at its normal folded state.

_'The current attack form has one opening that I can exploit... but I need to get some distance.'_

Ichika avoided all the subsequent attacks and flew higher up into the air.

"Naive!"

Sensing something was wrong, Ichika turned his head towards Rin.

It wouldn't have done anything as invisible orbs fired from the two orbs that floated around Rin's IS.

Ichika, relying on instinct, brought himself sharply to the side, but was ultimately grazed by the attack, sending him spinning towards the arena floor. Thankfully, he managed to bring himself upright before he impacted the ground.

"Just to let you know, that was just a jab."

Ichika shook his head to regain focus.

_'Damn! I've been too complacent!'_

He should have expected this much. Just like with Cecilia, it should be expected that IS he fights would have more weapons available. If anything, IS parts all did _something._ They weren't placed in an IS just for aesthetic purposes. And even though Yamada-sensei did say that the IS was close combat oriented, it didn't mean that it did not have long range attacks.

Ichika gripped his sword hard. Once he felt the attack fired, Ichika dashed forward and activated his sword's Fold-Out Armor ability.

The resulting collision created thick smoke.

* * *

><p>"Ichika!"<p>

"What was that attack just now?" Cecilia asked, worried for Ichika.

Yamada-sensei turned away from the screen.

"That was Impact Cannon. It compacts and pressurizes space, and then fires it as a shell."

"So it's a third generation IS just like my Blue Tears." Cecilia said.

"But why did Ichika still went on the offensive? Shouldn't the light emitting from the Impact Cannon be telltale signs that it was going to fire?"

Though Ichika wasn't exactly bright, he had good battle instincts.

Houki turned towards Chifuyu. She was surprised to find that she had a small smile on her face. Turning towards the screen, she was surprised to find that Ichika was rapidly closing in on Rin.

* * *

><p>"UWOOOOOO!"<p>

Ichika had flown close to the ground so when he had avoided the attack, the attack itself would throw up dust into the air obscuring him from Rin's vision. This was to provide cover for his next move.

The move in question was Ignition Boost.

Ignition Boost is a move that allows the user to travel at top speed for a moment to close in on the opponent. Since the attack was suppose to be a surprise attack, it could only work once against a competent opponent.

"What the - !"

Right before Ichika's Shield Nullifying Attack was going to connect, a glass shattering sound, followed by a loud explosion prevented him from completing the attack.

Taking his eyes off of Rin, who was looking shocked at the turn of events, he noticed that something had landed on the Arena floor. Whatever the thing was, it had broken the Arena Shield Border so it meant that it wasn't part of the match.

"The match is canceled!" Came Chifuyu's voice, "Orimura, Fan, retreat at once!"

The Arena began emergency lock down, and the stands was soon covered by metal plates. The lock down however, prevented anyone from the audience from going out.

"What is that?"

Ichika didn't pay any heed to the command. If there was something dangerous, he should at least hold it off until the teachers arrive.

"Ichika, the match is canceled. Return to the pit immediately." Rin called over to him.

Before he could respond however, a notice appeared at his screen.

The heat source within the smokes from the explosion had been confirmed as an IS. Not only that, whatever the IS was, it was currently locked onto him.

"It's locked onto me?"

Was he the first thing that the IS had seen? Heck, why is it acting hostile?

"Ichika! Quickly, move to the pit!"

"What will you do?"

"I'll buy some time so please escape."

"Escape and leave a girl behind? I can't do that."

"Idiot! You're the weaker one, so it can't be helped, right?"

Ichika wanted to refute that statement but knew that now wasn't the time.

"Also, I don't intend to fight till the end. In such an abnormal situation, the school's teachers will take care of the situation immedia-"

A purple beam shot out from the smokes towards Rin.

"Watch out!"

Ichika flew full speed towards Rin and caught her before the beam impacted her.

"That beam attack just now had a higher output than Cecilia's IS...aw!"

"You idiot, let go!" Rin was apparently flustered as she began to beat on his head.

"O-oi! Don't get so worked up in a situation like this!"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Rin was having none of it as she continued to beat on his head.

He was brought out of his current problem when his IS alerted him.

"It's coming!"

Another purple beam shot out from the smokes, just as a black IS stepped out of it. The IS had huge claw like arms, the IS pilot was wearing completely black and had a strange mask on. This only served to make it feel like that the pilot of the IS was inhuman.

It didn't help that he couldn't quite sense any presence or hostility from the IS.

"Is that really an IS?"

Somehow, he knew that even if he did try to converse with the IS, he would yield no answer.

"Orimura-kun, Fan-san, get out of the arena right now. The teachers are going to suppress it in there ISs." Yamada-sensei called out to them through their IS.

"But if we leave now, there would be no one to hold back that IS!"

If the black IS's purpose is to cause havoc, then if he and Rin were to run, the IS would turn its focus onto the escaping students. So if he could just grab hold of its attention until the teacher arrives, the possible casualties would be limited.

"That's true but... Orimura-kun!"

Ichika cut off the communication.

"You got that Rin?"

"W-Who are you talking about?" Her face had changed to a pink hue once again, "Rather than that, let go. I can't move like this!"

"Oh, sorry..."

Once Ichika and Rin separated, a purple beam cut in between them just as the Black IS flew up onto the skies towards them.

The Black IS flew directly towards him in an attempt to punch him, but the movement was too slow. Far too slow when compared to the projectiles it had fired moments ago.

Activating Yukihira Nigata's Ability to minimum output, he lowered his altitude just enough that the punch would only ruffle his hair, once the fist was above his head, he cleaved at the extension.

The opponent however stood unperturbed by the fact that it had lost one of its arm, instead it turned around and started raining beams towards them.

The sudden change, had Ichika flying away from the opponent to have a better chance to evade the beams.

"That was a nice move Ichika!" Rin complimented, "But it seems like our opponent is quite eager to battle. The opponent wasn't even fazed by that!"

"So it seems..."

Ichika still felt that there was something wrong with the opponent. Unless the opponent had anticipated the sudden turn of events, then there was no way that the opponent would not have shown even a single reaction to having a huge part of there IS cleaved.

Once the torrent of beams stopped, Rin and Ichika gathered at a certain point up on the sky.

"Ichika, I will back you up, so do what you did before." Rin said, "You don't have any other weapons, right?"

From what he had learned about his IS, it was a close quarters IS. It focused on high speed and attack that left little to defense. In a way, it complimented his Shinsei Tenka style. One notable disadvantage that he had learned was that his IS only had two Equalizer.

An Equalizer is basically equipment slots for an IS. In each equalizer, a single equipment can be placed which can then be materialized once the IS calls for it. So in Byaku Shiki's case, one of his equalizers is taken up by Yukihira Nigata. As for the other one, he wasn't quite sure what it was but for whatever reason, he couldn't quite access that particular slot.

"That's right."

Ichika admitted grudgingly.

People is in mortal danger now with that rogue IS in the field. So he needed to focus on taking down the IS through any means necessary. So now, he's going to hold back a little less to take down this opponent.

"Let's go with that plan."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

I originally planned to post this last week, but I was caught up with playing Final Fantasy Type 0. So I apologize for the delay.

The next update should come some time in the next two or three weeks (though this may change if my upcoming major assessment would be taking up a good portion of my free time). Till then, please review and tell me what you think of it thus far!


	9. Inter Class Tournament II

With the opponent IS losing one of its huge arms, the balance of the IS should normally be limited. But IS had advanced to the point that it could make up for these weaknesses. IS has the ability to adapt to situations when one of their parts are damaged.

The result can be seen quite clearly as the Black IS flew without problems as it avoided both Rin and Ichika's assaults. It was now more focused on avoiding Ichika's strikes, now that it has seen the strength of the user and its sword.

"Damn! This is getting us nowhere!"

Rin avoided another rain of beams from the black IS. The rain stopped as soon as Ichika closed in on it.

"It just keeps avoiding me!"

Ichika had already attempted to attack it numerous of times, but it seemed that despite seemingly being focused on preventing Rin from providing enough cover for him to attack, it was also keeping a sharp eye on him. In essence the opponent seemed to be well verse on multi-tasking, or at the very least, had a high spatial awareness.

Another attempt to attack later, the Black IS headed onto the black smoke that was still billowing from the damaged arena.

Not allowing the opponent a chance to snipe from the cover of the thick smoke, Rin and Ichika followed suit.

* * *

><p>Rin and Ichika had finally driven the opponent out of the cover of the smokes while sustaining minimal damage.<p>

Rin continued to pin the slow movements of the enemy using her Impact Cannon. As expected, one of the hits eventually made contact.

"Ichika now!"

Bursting into full speed, Ichika activated Yukihiro Nigata's Fold-Out Armor ability to utilize the Shield Nullifying Attack.

"UWOOOOOO!"

Ichika attempted to deliver a vertical slash to which the opponent promptly evaded.

It seemed that despite the fact that it was hit by Impact Cannon, it still had anticipated that Ichika would deliver a blow afterwards.

"Ichika, that's the third time you missed!"

Ichika had attempted to attack the opponent a total of four times. The first was the only time he actually cleaved the opponent. Consequent times after that, he had always missed since the opponent was completely expecting his attacks.

The opponent broke away, and began to rain beams on them once again.

"Ichika, break away!"

"O-okay!"

The two began to weave in and out of beams once again as they were reduced to dodging the attacks.

"So what do we do? We need some kind of plan or we will never win against this!"

Ichika silently agreed. For whatever reason, he was beginning to feel that his IS was a bit too slow to his liking despite the fact that his sister had said that the IS had high output regarding speed and attack power. So with the way he is now, he couldn't hope to deliver a finishing blow on his current state, even if he did go all out with regards to his Yukihiro Nigata.

"The opponent is locking onto me far too often... so why don't we switch roles?"

If the enemy was too focused on evading his attacks, then maybe it wouldn't be wary of Rin enough.

"But you don't have any other weapons aside from your sword!"

The two had once again gathered together in the air.

"Trust me. I'll protect your back." Ichika said resolutely.

The serious expression and the way Ichika had said those words, began to make Rin's heart start to beat rapidly. Her face was once again painted a pink hue making her slightly unfocused.

"T-thanks..."

That was the only thing she could say before her IS alerted her to an incoming attack to which it barely missed her head. Making the two break away.

"Concentrate!"

"I – I know!"

Once the rain of beams stopped, Ichika and Rin had noticed that the opponent was once again inside the cover of the black smoke. For whatever reason, it would stop attacking every now and then.

That was something that had been bothering Ichika ever since the beginning of the match.

Ichika had battled constantly with Yuuki numerous of times before her disappearance. Though it was one person, he knew what movement constituted to a human and a machine. In this case, he didn't notice any human-like movements – it was as if everything was being calculated. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't quite sense hostility from the IS even though it's practically trying to kill them.

"Hey Rin, don't you think that thing has almost machine-like movements?"

"What are you saying? IS are machines anyway."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, does that IS even have a human on board?"

Though he knew that IS only showed a reaction with female pilots (with him as the so far, sole exception), the IS he's fighting now may be using an unregistered core. A core like that however, should be impossible as no one has ever replicated the feat of Shinono Tabane. In fact, if something like that had indeed existed the creator would have been world famous by now.

"Huh? Without a human on board, IS don't move-"

Rin perked up as she noticed something.

The opponent still wasn't attacking.

"Come to think of it, that thing doesn't attack us while we're talking. It's as if it has some interest in us and listening to us."

"You think so too?"

If that was actually the case, then this IS was merely sent to gather data. The data could either be how the unmanned IS performed, or gathering data from IS users such as himself and Rin.

"Yes, but no. An unmanned IS is impossible. IS don't move without a human pilot. That's how it is."

For some reason however, the way she said it seemed to only be directed to herself. As if she was trying to reconfirm the facts that she had always known.

"Then if, and I mean if, it was an unmanned IS, then what would you think?"

"What? You think you could win if it was unmanned?"

Ichika wasn't quite sure of his chances, and his IS was beginning to move a bit too slowly according to his feelings. So he didn't quite know what his chances are on beating such an opponent.

_'Think...'_

If he didn't have enough skill to defeat the opponent, then he should take advantage of every other resource he could get a hold off.

Though Rin was an excellent IS pilot, she was still primarily focused on close range. Her Impact Cannon didn't even have enough power to properly damage the opponent's shield. He needed someone that can finish the opponent off at long range once they have drawn the IS's attention.

_'Wait... Cecilia must still be at the control room...'_

Ichika allowed himself a small smile.

"Yeah, so there's no pilot on board, we can attack mercilessly at full force."

Though he won't be going completely full force unless it was in a near death situation, it was good to create an illusion that he wasn't as weak as some of them might think. That, and whoever was watching through the eyes of that unmanned IS would think that this is his strength and continue to underestimate them until the next time they come.

Since he couldn't hope to find out whoever sent the unmanned IS, he'd just have to prepare for the next encounter so that something like this will never happen again.

"Full force, you say?"

"For whatever reason, I still can't reach Yukihiro Nigata's full attack power. But even then, the current maximum output of this sword is still too powerful that it can't be used in training and in Inter-class tournaments such as this."

Rin merely scoffed, "I don't care about the full attack power of Yukihiro Nigata, but you can't even hit that thing with your attacks."

Though that's certainly the problem they are currently in, he would need to utilize everything he can to hopefully make an attack connect.

Since he and Rin have now established the fact that the IS was unmanned, then it was safe to say the opponent would run in some sort of pattern according to certain variables.

A true master in the art of fighting could possibly anticipate an opponent's attacks, having a sort of precognition. Such a case would be quite impossible against an AI since their minds run in a different way. But a programmer, might be able to anticipate what an AI would do based on prior knowledge. There was also the fact that AI tended to move according to a set pattern, with little to no variations (of course the variations are based on the innate variable system that the program runs on). If that was the case, even a normal person would be able to start anticipating the oncoming attacks once they've gotten used to the patterns.

This would all fall apart however, if that IS was being controlled remotely.

"I'll hit it next time."

Rin gave a lazy sigh.

"Oh, you've said that quite clearly this time. Then why not attack, hypothesizing that the opponent is an unmanned IS, even if that's impossible?"

"Okay, on my mark, fire your Impact Cannon to the right flank of the opponent. Once I've moved to the right, attack the left. Don't let up, even if you think you'll hit me – you need to rapidly fire and pin the opponent down."

"You've got a plan now, huh?"

"ICHIKA!"

This promptly made Ichika lose focus for a second and made him look towards the pit. It seemed like Houki had arrived and has just yelled out his name.

"If you're a man, then how can you not win against an enemy of that level?"

The opponent apparently noticed that there was a person on the pits and had directed its attention towards the newcomer.

_'Can't she read the situation? She'll get herself killed!'_

Ichika frantically thought of ways to make sure no one got hurt, but with how exposed she is, there was only one way to stop the Black IS.

"Houki, run!"

The opponent began to charge its one arm towards Houki.

"Rin, do it!"

Rin nodded and started to rapid fire towards the opponent's right flank, causing the opponent to momentarily lose balance and fly towards its left flank.

Ichika took advantage of the moment and dashed towards the opponent's left. As expected, the opponent flew backwards, to avoid Ichika's attack. Ichika's attack however, had him caught on the dust that Impact Cannon had thrown into the air.

Rin shifted fire to the left, forcing the opponent towards the right. Once one of her attacks grazed the opponent's foot, she heard a distinct yell.

"UWOOOO!"

From the dust of the Impact Cannon, Ichika dashed with full speed towards the opponent that was heading towards his direction.

The opponent had anticipated such an event and was about to back up, until it was hit by another debilitating shot by Rin.

Ichika had anticipated that the opponent would fall for this tactics merely due to the fact that it would have never anticipated that Rin would even risk hitting Ichika at this kind of situation, let alone with the Impact Cannon at full force.

"You're not getting away this time!"

Thrusting and activating Yukihiro Nigata's Fold-Out Armor ability, he delivered a sharp blow towards the opponent's thrusters and both legs in a single movement.

Before the opponent could fall to the ground however, it used whatever remaining time it had in the air to deliver a punch towards Ichika, knocking him to the ground.

"Ack!"

The attack had left Ichika a bit disoriented. It was only the screams of both Rin and Houki that alerted him to the fact that the opponent was still attempting to kill him at its crippled state by using its remaining arm to fire a beam towards him.

Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, he smiled.

"Target is?"

"...Perfect."

A single well placed beam, with absolute accuracy, pierced the opponent's chest sending the IS down for the count.

Cecilia had sniped the Black IS with her own IS from the arena stands.

"I barely made it, you know." Cecilia said while Ichika stood up, his weapon still held firmly within his hand.

"I knew you'd make it."

"O-oh really?" Came the flustered voice of Cecilia. "O-of course!"

Ichika walked over towards the IS warily. He knew better than to assume the opponent would be down for the count.

Right before he could take another step to ascertain the fact that the opponent was indeed down, his IS alerted him that he was locked on.

"Ichika - !"

Not wasting any time, Ichika charged with his sword thrust in front as the beam cut through the smokes towards him. His sword was cutting through the beam, but the indirect hits of the beam was still damaging his barrier.

In the next second, an explosion rang throughout the arena.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Well, thus ends another chapter.

Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I really hoped that I could update sooner but life in the form of college threw me off once again. The next chapter should be out sometime this month.

Due to the fact that Ichika had yet to attain First Shift (and he does realize that Byaku Shiki isn't quite fitted to his needs yet), I made it impossible for him to activate the 'Reira Byakuya' or his One-Off Ability. After a bit of research, it was said that for a One-Off Ability to be activated, the pilot and the IS must have maximum synergy. Ichika not attaining First Shift yet, means that he hadn't reached that point yet. So in the end, he needed to rely on tactics to defeat the IS. He is still holding back, but only in terms of sword skills. He did promise not to use Shinsei Tenka unless it was in a life-or-death situation; and even though the situation was indeed dangerous, it still wasn't enough.

Special thanks to Box-kun and Chronostorm for correcting me on some information that was stated in the previous chapter.

The next chapter would be the epilogue of this part. As always, I'm open to corrections - be it grammatical or informational wise - I'm also open to simple comments as it boosts my motivation to write more!


	10. Inter Class Tournament End

The first thing that registered in Ichika's mind as he opened his eyes was the dull white ceiling that one would usually relate to a hospital room.

_'So I'm in the infirmary huh...'_

He had only been to the infirmary a few times in his own life. Most of which was due to simple sickness or injuries. As he grew, it steadily decreased to the point that he hadn't gone to an infirmary for four years now (excluding the times that he went into one to visit a friend of his and the first few training sessions he had with Yuuki). Somehow, he had a sinking feeling that with the way his life was going now, he'd be going to the infirmary much more often in the coming three years.

Blinking a few times, he tried to recall how he got into the infirmary.

The last thing that he could remember before he ultimately lost consciousness is a bright white light that engulfed his entire being. Aside from that, nothing. There was a slight hot sensation, but the light had seemingly numbed his senses.

Before he could test his limbs if everything was all right, he noticed that Rin was closing onto his face.

"What are you doing?"

She immediately backed off as if she had just gotten caught on something red handed.

"Y-you were awake?"

Ichika sat up and got a better look at her.

"Why are you so startled?"

"I-I'm not!" Her face was getting even redder by the second. It wasn't very convincing when she was stammering and her face is red. "Don't go saying random things, idiot!"

Thinking about her actions for a moment, he could say that he came across it before from one of the things he had read before. Those things however, were fiction, so he doubted that what was written in there would apply to real life. So he decided to change the subject.

"What happened to that IS?"

Due to the change of subject, Rin's blushing face subsided.

"It self destructed."

"Self Destructed?"

"Yeah. Before you could reach the IS, it exploded. We thought you were done for, but it seems like your IS's absolute barrier took most of the force. You were only knocked out by the shock wave caused by the explosion."

"Did anyone - ?"

Rin shook her head with a small smile. Even though it has been years since they have last met, Ichika always cared for other people's safety – even more than his own.

"No. Only you were the one that got injured from the attack. Your IS would need to be repaired for the time being."

"Thank goodness."

Ichika looked over at the window beside his bed. The sky was painted a dull orange, signifying that it was late afternoon already. This also served to remind him of the reason why he had wanted to win in the tournament a few hours ago.

"Hey, while we were in grade school, it was during a sunset like this when we had the talk about sweet and sour pork."

"Huh?"

Due to the events that had happened, he could remember how the promise was made quite clearly. It was around after school when it happened. They were alone in the class room and the sun was painted the same dull orange as it was now.

_If my cooking gets better, will you eat my sweet and sour pork every day?_

Thinking back on it now, he took the promise at face value. He had never received a reason to believe that there could have been an alternate meaning. A meaning that was obvious to Rin, but one that even in his more matured state when compared to the time that the promise was made, continued to escape him.

"Did that promise have some different meaning? Back then, and even now, I thought it only meant that you would give me free food."

"Th-that's not wrong! I-it's not wrong! Cooking gets better if someone eats your food." She started to laugh nervously.

Ichika was unconvinced, but he decided to accept it for now. With the way he is at the present, he couldn't hope to decipher how woman's heart works. It doesn't mean however, that he wouldn't try to slowly work it out. That way, he would reduce the times that he would accidentally hurt a woman through his words or by misunderstanding (which seemed to be happening quite frequently).

"I'd like to eat your sweet and sour pork, though... your father's cooking was great. I'd like to eat it again."

"Oh, umm..."

The tone of her voice was rather quiet, and had a feeling of melancholy that made Ichika quiet up and listen intently.

"We don't own the restaurant anymore."

This made his mind grind into a halt.

"Huh, why not?"

"My parent's divorced. That's why I had to go back to my country."

So that was the reason why her tone when he asked about her father a week ago felt rather melancholic and had made her change the subject quickly.

When she had left, it was rather abrupt. It wasn't as abrupt as Houki, but Rin was only able to tell him that they were going back to China – anything else she had wanted to said was sent through email due to the fact that she had to go already.

The atmosphere of the room was now rather uncomfortable.

He didn't know the feeling of losing parents even though he himself didn't have one.

It was not that he and Chifuyu didn't have any parents – everyone had parents at some time of their lives. His sister might know the feeling of losing parents, but he didn't know. It was at a young age when their father and mother had abandoned them. He felt that he should hold some sort of anger against them, but he didn't know them well enough and it felt like a wasted effort.

"Should we... should we have some fun some day?"

Ichika didn't know what to say at this point, but he believed that it would be best to move on from this kind of depressing talk.

"Huh, is that a date?"

She visibly lightened up at the notion.

Before they could talk any further, the door slid open and Cecilia burst into the room.

"Ichika-san, how are you doing? I came to nurse-" She stopped mid-sentence when she noticed that Rin was in the infirmary already. "Huh?"

She walked quickly towards Rin and glared at her. All traces of her earlier mood gone.

"Why are you - ? We promised not to make any head starts until Ichika-san woke up!"

"...You too. You were going to get a head start on me in secret."

Houki had also arrived.

"T-that's..."

"Y-you two! Leave already! Ichika is my childhood friend."

"That applies to me, too."

"People from class 2 shouldn't-"

Ichika decided to not think too hard on what the three were implying. It just seemed moot point when he couldn't even decipher the hidden meaning within a promise that seemed to be pretty literal.

Looking around, he noticed that his sister was nowhere to be found.

"Huh? Where's Chifuyu-nee?"

The three girls turned to each other.

"Now that you mention it..."

"Where did she go?"

"She was with us a second ago."

* * *

><p><em>Somewhere within IS Academy...<em>

Yamada-sensei and Chifuyu was looking at the remnants of the Black IS at a laboratory unknown to students.

Yamada was busy scanning through the IS core of the Black IS. This was the only part remaining from the self-destructed IS.

As there were only 467 IS cores in existence, mainly due to the fact that Shinono Tabane refused to make any more, IS producers around the globe took extra care on how the core is placed within an IS. The way it was placed in an IS would make sure that even if the IS were to explode, the core itself would remain relatively unharmed. In a way, it was comparable to the black box of airplanes.

"It was an unmanned drone as we thought..."

The remains of the self-destructed IS had no signs of a human controlling it. An IS doesn't have a self-destruct function. There have been a program created for that purpose but was never installed in any of the IS of today. It had been marked illegal on placing it on a Personal IS (especially since each country only had a very limited number of IS cores). In this case, the self-destruction didn't damage the core and though the damage to where the pilot should have been was extensive, it wasn't fatal. If it had been a human.

Where the pilot was supposed to be, was a damaged but identifiable robot. At least it looked like that at first glance, but it seemed to be a large CPU in the shape of a human that regulated how the IS moved. Aside from this, it was also noted that it was sending information to an outside source.

Due to the explosion, most of its circuits were broken. They could only salvage a few information regarding the mechanized structure.

"It had an unregistered core."

Due to the limited IS cores, every core is registered into a database. If an IS was to go berserk or go through some problem, part of the blame would fall to the country that the core was registered to. The fact that this IS is unregistered was extremely troubling.

"I see."

While this particular core wasn't as advance or as perfect as the cores made by Shinono Tabane, the fact remained that someone has made a core aside from the creator. What's more, it was impossible to concretely lay the blame on any known nations or organizations.

As for where the Black IS was sending the signal, it was using relay points throughout Japan, making it a long arduous process on pin-pointing the original source. By the time they would find it, the perpetrators would be long gone.

One thing could be said though from the data that they have taken.

That it stood out even through the myriad of actions the Black IS had done today.

Its target was Ichika.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

This is a rather short chapter, even for my standards. I had written more, but I believed it wouldn't mix well for this chapter since this serves as an epilogue for this arc.

As for the information regarding the Black IS, I had changed it (I wouldn't know if I'm actually going by the canon information) to suit my needs in the future. The fact about IS cores and black box was something I made up (if it was actually like that in the novels, again, I wouldn't know). I'm also still thinking if I should follow the events of the light novel or the anime regarding the fight against the White IS. If you have a certain preference over the other, please submit it through reviews.

I also planned on releasing this last week, but I couldn't let myself be distracted since the following week after that was final exams. Since it's now over, I decided to update. The next chapter might come out within one or two weeks or if it isn't possible, next month.

That said, the next arc is something that had been touched upon in the anime (and the light novel... I think), but I'm expanding it to serve my purpose of introducing several new characters and to establish certain things regarding where this story would eventually head. I ain't going to say much more on the matter, since I risk spoiling it.

Merry Christmas to all! And please review or comment about my stories (be it constructive criticism or otherwise), it would motivate me to write more!


	11. Grounds of Recollection

_A Few Days Later..._

"The others are all girls, huh? You must be having a great time." Dan Gotanda commented off handedly as he mashed buttons on the game controller.

Ichika was currently in the Gotanda family's restaurant. He had stopped by since he had quite a bit of free time. Due to the fact that his IS was currently under repair, he was given a week off of school. With that in mind, he decided to visit his hometown.

"I'm not."

With the last few months he's been in IS Academy, he was feeling mostly the stress of proving himself and not making a fool of himself in front of everyone in the school. Due to the fact that he was the only guy, he couldn't quite connect with anyone. He was also always worried if he would accidentally hurt anyone's feelings. Being in an all girl's school (with the exception of himself) didn't mean that he would suddenly get an understanding of woman's feelings.

"Lies, all lies!" Dan shoved at Ichika playfully, "Just reading your emails made me imagine paradise. Don't you have passes?"

"No, you idiot. But I'm glad that Rin transferred in. I had a few people I can talk with."

"Oh. Rin, huh? Rin..."

Like himself, Dan was also friends with Rin but he wasn't as close to Rin like Ichika.

The door slammed open, followed by a familiar female voice.

"Onii, lunch is ready. Hurry up and come eat already-"

Ran, Dan's sister, stopped midway as she finally noticed who else was in the room with his brother.

"I-Ichika-san?"

"Oh, Ran. Long time no see. Excuse me for intruding."

Ran looked dumbfounded for a moment before looking down at her current state of dress. She immediately went out of view and fixed her clothing, once done she timidly peeked into the room again.

"O – Oh my... Y-you were here?"

"Yeah, some stuff happened and I'm taking a short off-campus vacation. I wanted to check up on my house and thought I'd drop by here."

"I – I see..."

"Ran, you can knock you now." Dan said, "You'll be considered a shameless woman- urk!" He immediately stopped whatever he was going to say after receiving a glare from his sister.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She hissed at her brother quietly enough that Ichika couldn't quite hear it.

"O – Oh... I – I didn't tell you? Ah, ha, ha... Sorry, my bad..."

Ichika only watched curiously on their interaction.

After finishing their game, Ichika ate downstairs at the main restaurant. Like Rin's family before, Dan's family owned a restaurant. It apparently acts as both their home and place of work.

So right now, Ichika was eating.

"Umm... Ichika-san."

Ichika looked up from his meal to Ran.

She had apparently changed clothes from her casual wear to a white blouse. In all honesty it felt out of place in a place like this. But it looked good on her nonetheless.

"Please make yourself at home."

"You changed your clothes, huh? Are you going out somewhere?"

That was the only thought that ran through his mind with the way she suddenly dressed.

If only he had even a slight inkling as to what she was thinking.

"Oh, no... This is just... Umm, you see..."

"A date?"

"NO!"

Ichika was taken aback by the quick reply.

"You must act like that at school, too." Dan commented after taking a sip from his tea.

* * *

><p>Ichika bid farewell to the Gotanda siblings and headed towards his old house.<p>

It had been a while since he had gone to his old house. He had a sneaking suspicion that it would be quite a mess since neither his sister and himself had visited it for the last few months. They didn't bother visiting it since Ichika was still trying to get used to being a student in IS Academy and using IS. Another reason would be because its more safer.

_'Chances are, I'll probably have to do some cleaning before I do anything else...'_

Since he'd be sleeping in his old house for the duration of his out-of-campus vacation, he'd need it to be clean.

Once he arrived at his house, he immediately dropped his luggage by the sofa and began cleaning up.

Thankfully, only a small amount of dust had gathered in the three months that there were no inhabitants.

_'I spent nearly all my life in this town...'_

As far as he could remember, he and Chifuyu had been living in the same house since he started school. So he felt a sense of nostalgia since this was the longest he had been apart from this house. It was also the first house they've ever owned, which meant that Chifuyu had no plans on selling it despite the fact that they no longer went home here.

He had never actually thought that he would start living away from the house he had known throughout his whole life. When he had plan to take the Entrance Exam on the high school he planned on going to, he had only chosen it since it was near his home. Now that he's back, he finally realized that he had lost a certain sense of freedom that isn't, or at the very least, is limited at IS Academy.

Ichika glanced towards his watch.

It was 3:30PM.

_'I still have enough time to check that place out...'_

Ichika headed towards his room and grabbed his katana from his secret compartment. The secret compartment really was just a loose floorboard that was apparently big enough to hide a variety of things (which, back then, were a huge amount of light novels, manga and video game).

The katana in question was, at least to his limited knowledge of katanas, was well built. It still kept its pristine condition despite not having any maintenance.

Since he started attending IS Academy he couldn't bring his secret items along with him unless he wanted to risk letting others find out about them. He still wanted to bring it along, but he still hadn't found a way of keeping it a secret from the rest.

Sighing to himself, he dashed out of his house with his katana and headed towards his secret training spot.

He didn't exactly know what to find, his mind hadn't actually thought of what to expect. His body had moved with its own accord, and his sense of elation only clouded his thoughts as it began to rise with each step he took towards his training spot.

* * *

><p>The sun was setting and only a few minutes remained before darkness enveloped the horizon.<p>

Ichika didn't know how long he had been staring at the ground of the untouched training spot.

His mind had gone blank the moment he entered the clearing.

He didn't quite know what to expect when he had rushed to the training spot with his katana – or rather, he wanted to believe. To believe that maybe, just maybe, that he would see a sign. A sign that he had been waiting for since that fateful day.

"What am I doing..."

Ichika muttered softly, as he looked at the ground before him.

He shouldn't have expected anything. In fact, it may have been better if he didn't come. At least, he would have never known that nothing had changed. He would have become oblivious to something he still refused to accept.

She wasn't gone. At least, not in the sense that he would never a chance to meet her again. But... it still felt as if she was.

Ichika slowly walked over to log on which he and Yuuki usually sat after training.

It was usually at this time he would collapse at the log, his sweat seeping into its bark while Yuuki would calmly sit next to him and would comment that he was doing the tree a favor by feeding it water directly from his body.

_'Where are you Yuuki...'_

What could he do? He couldn't just look for her. If she had left so suddenly, she might have had an emergency just like Rin. She might have left so to not involve him. Knowing her, she might have accurately guessed that he will do anything in his power to help. But what could the problem possibly have been that she didn't want him to be involved? A personal problem? A family problem?

He was brought out of his musings when something entered his range of sense.

His hand immediately went to his katana's hilt.

"Who's there?"

The sun had long gone down and the numerous trees around the area only made it harder to pinpoint where the intruder was.

_'I should have at least had the decency to bring a flashlight!'_

While he had never thought that he would be placed in such a dangerous situation so soon, he should have at least been prepared for something like this. He may not be as well known as his sister, but the fact that he was the only male IS user in the world should have already placed him in high alert.

Debating with himself whether to run or stay and defend, the decision was soon made for him when someone stepped into the clearing.

It was a man of about medium height. If he had to guess, the man was roughly a few inches taller than him. He looked like one of those drunkards in a bar as he had a stubble. The man also wore an expensive looking polo shirt yet it contrasted heavily with the khaki shorts he was wearing.

The man walked into the clearing with a placating gesture, but Ichika knew better than to let his guard down.

"I'm not here to fight, you know."

The casual tone of the man despite the fact that he held a katana verified the feeling that there was something up.

"Still not letting your guard down? You actually did keep your promise."

This made Ichika's eyes widen marginally. He was still wary, but he paid close attention to what the man was going to do.

The man stopped a few meters from Ichika.

"You must be Orimura Ichika, right?"

The casual tone of the man would normally send someone to a sense of safety, but with the tense situation it shouldn't have been present. In fact, this gave him the feeling that the man felt himself well protected, which could either mean that there were more people around him or that the man was confident that no matter what he did, he couldn't hope to hurt him.

"How did you know my name?"

Ichika's grip towards the hilt of his katana tightened.

"Well, you _are_ the only male IS pilot, right? Plus that worldwide news a few months back..."

He couldn't deny that.

"No, but that isn't exactly how I knew you." The man admitted, "Whether you know it or not kid, you're pretty well known to the _organization._ To the point that they've taken a vested interest on your potential. It doesn't help that you're the only student _that_ master has ever taken."

_'Only student?'_

There was only one person that could possibly have referred to. That initially shy yet bright person he had been glad to have known. The one person that he had been hoping to find since she had disappeared, and the sole reason he was here now.

"Master? Wait, are you talking about -"

"Of course, kid." The man said cutting him off, "I'm talking about Amakusa Yuuki."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

This is the start of a new arc and is expanded to have seven whole days and a unique plot of its own. This arc will serve as an opener or a sort of preparatory for future conflicts that is not part of the Infinite Stratos Canon. In other words, he'll be in much deeper 'crap' than he was in his canon counterpart.

I'll probably be taking the light novel version of the events during the Silver Gospel incident. As it stands, I'm currently thinking of whether to have the First Shift before or during the incident... something I'm not quite sure of yet.

For clarification, Ichika does not have his IS worn as it is under repairs due to the damage it took from the self-destructed IS.

The next chapter would hopefully come out next month. That may change depending on how my new schedule in college affects me.

Anyway, review, constructive criticism and/or comment, it's the one thing that keeps me going as a writer!


	12. Seijou Hisoji

Shock was the first emotion that entered Ichika's head before another emotion overshadowed it: Hope.

Hope, that he'll be able to find Yuuki once again and make sure that she's alright. That he could find out the reason as to why she had left in the first place.

Yet, another emotion tinged his hope. Doubt.

"H – how did you – ?"

Ichika couldn't make sense of it. As far as he knew, no one should have known that Yuuki was a master of the sword. She only showed that side to him when she had defended him and taught him the way of the sword. The fact that this person knew her meant that this guy knew of her.

"Know? Surely, you could come unto a conclusion by yourself, right?" The man said in a tone that irritated Ichika, "Well to put it simply, it's because the organization has put a bounty on her."

"Bounty?"

"Yes. Much like the one you have yourself."

Though the tone he had used was still the same, there was a sharpness in it that seemingly made the cool temperature of the surroundings go even cooler.

"The fact that you're a student of that master, along with the fact that you're the only male IS user known to man, you're an extremely valuable person."

Now that he thought about it, the main reason that Chifuyu had placed him within IS Academy was for his protection. He had read a specific article about the school regulations himself, it basically said that so long as he is studying in IS Academy, he is part of no organization and he can't be grabbed by any other. In a sense, Chifuyu was biding for more time to better protect him. If he wasn't studying in IS Academy, who knew what would have happened to him by now.

"So... you're after me?"

"Didn't I just tell you that I'm not here to fight?"

The man looked at him as if he was stupid.

Ichika couldn't help feel a bit peeved with the way he was looking at him.

"No, I'm just here to inform you that you should prepare yourself for future encounters. That means, continue with the promise."

The man turned around and started to walk away.

The sudden action made Ichika lose his composure.

"Wait!"

The man stopped and turned his head slightly to look at him.

"How do you know of Yuuki?"

The man turned forward. If he didn't know any better, Ichika could have sworn that the man smiled despite not seeing his face.

"Well it's getting dark. If you want to talk some more, follow me."

Seeing the man continue to walk made Ichika hesitate. He didn't know the man clearly enough, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he probably couldn't beat the man if things go awry. But, this had been the first time he had gotten a potential lead about Yuuki. He didn't know when a chance like this would happen again.

Slowly, his feet began to move forward, one after another.

* * *

><p>It was 7:25PM.<p>

Ichika had followed the man into the city near his town and was now in the elevator heading up to the 42nd floor of a condominium.

Throughout the trip here, they had not spoken a single word. The man however radiated a sort of aura that seemingly annoyed him. Ichika tried not to show his building irritation, but it didn't help that the man would take a small glance at him (almost as if sensing his irritation) and smirk at him. It was due to that he decided to keep his mind elsewhere.

"We're here."

Ichika looked up from his current thoughts to find that the man had opened a door to a very expensive looking room.

Ichika blinked.

He rubbed his eyes a few times.

He looked at the man questioningly.

"Oi, just because I dress up like this, it doesn't mean I'm poor, you know."

Ichika didn't bother to grace that with a reply.

Ichika stepped inside and got a better look at the large room. While the man, headed towards his small personal bar.

"Anything you'd like to drink, kid?"

"Uhh... Juice would be fine." He replied without thinking.

Upon closer inspection of the room, Ichika noticed that there were a two katanas at the table in the living room. It seemed to be in the middle of maintenance as various tools were scattered around it.

_'So he really knows how to fight with a sword...'_

It was at times like this that he was glad he wasn't one to jump unto a conclusion.

"Here."

The man handed him a can of orange juice and motioned him to sit by the sofa.

Ichika nodded and complied.

"It isn't often I get a guest here, so it's kinda messy in here. And my maid won't be back tomorrow."

The man took a sip from his soda can.

"Anyway, I'll begin with introducing myself. I'm Seijou Hisoji. I'm a retired master of the sword, so I may not be as sharp as some that would be coming to challenge you in the near future."

"Challenging me?"

Hisoji began to laugh at Ichika's innocent looking expression.

"Eh? What's so funny?"

After the man calmed down from his fit of laughter, he gave Ichika a calculating look.

"I guess Amakusa-sama didn't tell you about the risk of learning Shinsei Tenka."

"Risk?"

"Yes, risk. You've seen it in action before, right? You've even seen how a simple shinai can shatter rock without breaking itself."

Ichika nodded, fully understood what Hisoji was telling him. He had seen many of the unbelievable feats of Shinsei Tenka, and had held himself back in fear of hurting people further than what he had originally intended. Also, he was often in the receiving end of it.

_'Had she not held back, I'd probably have so much broken bones that I'd never have learned anything.'_

"So, it shouldn't be a surprise that other masters would attempt to find the secrets of such a technique from you so they can beat Amakusa-sama."

"But why would they want to beat her?"

"Think about it. The Shinsei Tenka that Amakusa-sama knows is the strongest of its variations. Not one person has beaten her, be it male or female of varying sword styles. As you are the only student of her, and you're now the only known male IS user, it'd be no surprise that you'd become a target. Of course, most organizations would focus on the fact that you are the only male IS user." He paused for a moment, "There's also the fact that she was rather arrogant throughout her youth and had pissed off a lot of people some of them, highly influential."

Ichika didn't know that the fact he was learning to defend himself was actually bringing him more unwanted attention. He was also pretty unaware of how Yuuki was before he met her. His first impression of seeing her after all was that she was a shy girl. This apparently lit a metaphorical light bulb within his head.

"...is that why?"

Hisoji gave him a calm smile.

"She probably won't return until you can properly defend yourself. That's partly the reason why she made you agree to the promise."

So that was the reason why she made him agree to such an odd promise. Even when she left she still thought about his well being. Due to this, he could continue on with his training with renewed vigor. He didn't want to disappoint her after all.

"Hm? You said partly, why is that?"

Hisoji only answered with the same annoying smirk like before.

* * *

><p>Ichika was now walking towards his house.<p>

He had left after being forced to eat dinner at Hisoji's condominium room (forced was the word due to the fact that Hisoji didn't let him leave until he accepted his offer).

Despite the fact that he was somewhat a bit disgruntled by Hisoji's personality, he still felt a lot better than he had in the last few months. It was with the information that Yuuki was alright and was only staying away from him due to the fact that he might be in more danger with Yuuki around him.

_'With that thing cleared up, I need to focus on training!'_

With what he had learned, it had the added effect of motivating him to go training once again and learning as much as he could in IS Academy.

But training can wait. It's pretty late anyway.

It was about 10PM when he finally reached his house.

Ichika yawned.

"First thing I'll do however, is get a long sleep."

Closing the front gate, he was about to use his keys to open the front door when he finally noticed that someone was behind him. He first thought nothing of it, until he noticed that his senses were screaming at him that whatever was behind him is dangerous.

It was only through his constant training and his fights in the IS that allowed him to avoid an attack that could potentially have endangered his life.

Ichika immediately sidestepped and avoided a tranquilizer dart directed towards his back.

A dart lodged itself at the wooden door of his house, sending splinters to the side at the sheer force behind it.

Thinking quickly, Ichika threw his key like a dart towards the estimated direction of the person's eye while dashing towards the person with his hand in the traditional battou-jutsu form. He immediately unsheathed his katana once he came onto the opponent's range and aimed it towards the person's neck while his scabbard was used to knock away the person's gun.

Ichika's earlier attack with the key had been apparently strong enough to pierce the sunglasses that the person was wearing as the apparent female was now holding her left eye with her hand.

"Who are you and for whom do you work for?"

Ichika isn't one to make threats, but with what he had learned from Hisoji this evening, he had every right to be wary about anyone that came to attack him.

Judging from the woman's widened eyes, it didn't seem she expected that he would have retaliated or even avoided the attack that was suppose to incapacitate him. That however, was short lived as her eyes narrowed on his.

The woman didn't grace him with an answer, instead a bright white light enveloped her.

_'She's an IS user?'_

Before Ichika could react, he was blown through his door and the distinct sound of an IS flying away soon filled his ears.

Picking himself up from the floor, he could no longer see where the IS had gone.

"This won't be a safe break, huh?"

He was pretty glad no one was there to answer his question.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Alright, here's my update for the month of February. Things have been relatively slow for me as a writer for this story. Though that doesn't mean I would stop anytime soon. It's just that it would be rare for me to update twice a month for the same story. For that, I'll be increasing the word limit I have per each chapter. Starting the next chapter, I'll be increasing the minimum word count to 3000 instead of my usual 2000.

If you guys haven't checked my profile, I've started another story as a side project whenever I get a writer's block. This story basically combines several aspects from several works but still has the main character of the series as the main character.

Self advertising done, I'd like to say review, comment or submit constructive criticism! Those helps me as a writer be it as a way to improve and is a source of motivation!


	13. Quandary

Houki was deep in thought.

She was spending most of her time practicing with her shinai while her thoughts were elsewhere.

If Ichika was around, then she'd probably more busy watching over him so that the other gi- okay, she's losing track of the true purpose why she's currently deep in thought.

She had watched the battle with the Black IS and several things came to light that she didn't quite like.

Anyone who saw the battle would say that the target was Ichika, that in itself wasn't odd since he was an anomaly. Many nations wanted him. But the thing that startled her the most was how Ichika reacted to the battle. According to Chifuyu, Ichika had been part of the 'Go-home' club ever since middle school. Even though Houki trained him along with Cecilia, she doubted that would be enough to get him to react the way he did. He definitely didn't react the same way he would in training. So that only left one answer.

He was holding back.

Now the question is, why?

He had shown a great amount of ingenuity throughout the battles he went through that day. That plan in the end was certainly unexpected. Rin had said that Ichika was the one who devised the plan and he hadn't even mentioned the part of including Cecilia into the plan so she was just as surprised as those who had watched the events taking place when he was knocked onto the ground by the rogue IS.

Houki paused her practice and walked over to the desk which held a computer.

She pressed a button that replayed the last parts of the battle.

Ichika's forms were flawless.

The way he bent low and sliced through the thrusters and legs of the Black IS in one swift motion was captivating once seen in slow motion.

She definitely had not taught that and doubted that Chifuyu had also.

It was unique.

It was graceful.

That wasn't the sword style that she nor Chifuyu practiced.

Rin and Cecilia couldn't quite really see how odd the attack was. Cecilia had only met Ichika a few months ago and Rin wasn't really a practitioner of the way of the sword. Chifuyu probably has an idea but is likely to be in the dark like she was – if the fact that she could only say that Ichika had been part of the go-home club for a while now was anything to go by.

The replay was now showing Ichika rushing towards the fallen Black IS, a second later – a bright explosion enveloped the screen.

Houki pressed the stop button.

Watching that same scene always sent a chill down her spine. If she hadn't known that Ichika survived that, she had a strange desire to go and throttle her sister for some reason.

Houki turned her head towards her roommate's empty bed.

Ichika was at break due to all the things that had happened. While he was allowed a small break outside of campus, the other students still had work to do. Which included herself. So there was no way for her to go out of campus and go ask Ichika personally until he got back.

If she couldn't find anything these coming days before he came back, she hoped she'd be able to decipher what exactly is he hiding and why was he hiding it.

* * *

><p>Ichika had decided to keep the whole 'someone is out to get him' from his sister. She already had a lot more to worry about, and if he spoke about it, he might never get a chance like this again.<p>

Aside from training, Ichika spent most of his time having fun. The stress of proving himself in IS Academy barely gave him time for himself, so he was milking this break for all its worth.

"What should I do now?"

Ichika stretched his stiff limbs after playing video games for two hours straight.

"Seems like you're having fun."

Ichika glanced to his left and noticed it was the same man from before.

"Ah! Seijou-san."

"Don't call me that." Hisoji scowled, "It reminds me of my old man."

"Old man - ? Ah, sorry..." Ichika quickly apologized seeing that the question was apparently a sore spot for the man, "Then what should I call you?"

"Just call me Hisoji."

Ichika nodded, "Alright, Hisoji-san." Looking at the man before him, he noticed he was holding a bag from a supermarket.

Hisoji raised the plastic after noticing that Ichika was looking at it, "This? I ran out of food some time ago so I went to the market. But you know, I didn't actually think that you'd be playing around after hearing the true reason that Amakusa-sama left."

Ichika merely shrugged.

"I guess it's true that worrying would get you nowhere. Anyway, I better head back home. If you need any help, just come over. You _are_ Amakusa-sama's student after all."

With that, the Hisoji went on his way.

Ichika headed towards the mall to get some lunch.

Due to the meeting with Hisoji, Ichika felt a bit more conscious on what he was going to do for the rest of the day. He had initially planned just to have fun for the rest of the day after morning training, but the fact that the enemy could come at any minute and he only had one person to rely on was not helping. If he already felt intimidated by Hisoji a few days back, then what would happen if he met a true master of the sword or another rogue IS?

It's true that worrying would get him nowhere, but if he didn't act on it, then he would truly be going nowhere. He already did his training for today, but what else could he do? He was only repeating what he remembered from his training session with Yuuki. Even though he wasn't exactly learning anything new, he was still having trouble on mastering the more advance forms. Yuuki had even mentioned that the purpose of the student is to advance the style and continue its evolution to something unbeatable.

_'Yuuki had once mentioned that the 8th to 12th forms were created by herself. She had created her own custom styles of the first to the 11th. So am I suppose to do something similar?'_

Ichika was still immersed within his own thoughts when the food he had ordered finally reached his table.

"Sir, here is your order."

"Eh? Ah, sorry! Thank you!"

Ichika absently apologized and began to eat the food before him, his tongue numb to the taste of the food.

_'Now that I think about it, why did she take me in as a student?'_

Hisoji had mentioned in their meeting that many would have fought for the privilege of learning from Yuuki. Yet, why did she agree to training him in the first place? What did he have that others didn't? Was it just because he was the first one to actually _ask?_ Or did he pass a certain criteria that none had ever done before?

***Ring!*** ***Ring!***

A ringing from his phone broke him from his thoughts. He plucked his cellphone out of his pocket and noted that the caller was one of his friend's parents.

"Um, hello?"

"Ah, Ichika-kun! I heard you were in town for this whole week, so I was wondering if you could help me with something..."

* * *

><p><em>A Few Hours Later...<em>

"Ha!"

Ichika's arms was a blur as it cleaved the descending log, cutting it into a perfect half. The log fell onto the ground, with a clean cut placed right on the center of the log. Around the fallen log, lay a multitude of other logs that had been cut in a similar fashion.

While this may count as destruction of nature, Ichika was asked by one of his friend's father to do it (although oddly enough, he still hadn't seen his friend yet). They provided the logs, while he cut them up for them. It was also an added bonus that he was being paid for it and he was free to cut it in any way so long as he made the logs smaller. Really, he should be thanking them instead of the other way around for providing something for him to practice on.

Ichika's arms burned a small degree, but it was certainly not enough that he would stop. Though he would have to stop cutting logs now since he ran out. He was pretty sure that his friend's father did not want the logs to be as small as chopsticks.

Even though there are numerous trees that surrounded the clearing to which he always train, that didn't mean that he was permitted (by Yuuki) to cut it (that and it may cause some people to stumble into his secret training ground). Besides, he had no need for the log himself anyway.

Ichika raised the sword up to his eyes.

The sword gleamed and shined far more than any of the swords he had seen in real life. The katana was in perfect condition despite the fact that it had little to no maintenance in the last few months. It was as if he had just received it. The scabbard held nothing special so its current condition couldn't have been due to it being placed there. He also doubted that someone would break into his house for the express purpose of maintaining his sword.

What he had also noticed that due to the weight of his katana, he couldn't quite execute most of the 'Creation' techniques of Shinsei Tenka. He didn't know what the actual weight of a katana was, but the one in his hand was heavy. If he even attempted it, he might dislocate his shoulder at the attempt. Maybe with an IS he'd be able to do it, but he hoped he didn't need to do so anytime soon.

Sheathing his katana and placing it in a blue strip of cloth, he placed it on his back as he picked up the fallen logs and made his way towards the house of his friend's father. He already learned his lesson in staying far too late at night.

* * *

><p>"Thanks for the help Ichika-kun."<p>

"It was no problem, really." Ichika waved it off, "I was glad to help."

"How is your new school treating you?" The man asked with a knowing grin.

"A bit stressful, but its fine nonetheless." Ichika said ignoring what the man could possibly be implying. "How's Rakan by the way?"

Rakan was a former classmate of Ichika. They hadn't met that much in class due to the fact they had classes at different rooms. It was only an accident that they had met. It was also due to said accident that Rakan viewed Ichika as a rival of sorts.

"See for yourself." Was the man's tired reply just before he sidestepped to the right.

From behind the man, a spiky haired boy of about Ichika's age burst through the door of the shop and flew at him with a flying kick.

Ichika ducked from the attempted attack as the boy passed through him and brought his sheath katana to block the follow-up attack from his prone back. Once the impact connected, he pivoted in place and placed himself within his opponent's range and attempted to deliver a right hook towards his opponent's face.

The attack was deftly guarded by the now grinning opponent.

"You're still as sharp as ever Ichika!" The young spiky haired man lowered his leg and gave a throaty laugh.

"You still haven't stopped with the surprise attacks, Rakan." Ichika said a bit sheepish as he retracted his fist.

Rakan had seen Ichika's prowess with the sword when he stumbled upon Ichika's training spot with Yuuki a few days after accidentally meeting up with him in the morning. Yuuki had noticed his presence and after a good talk, Yuuki proposed that Rakan could use Ichika as a sparring buddy (so long as it did not take place in the training spot) so long as he kept the existence of the training and the kind of training that Ichika went through (which included the kind of style he learned). Rakan had easily accepted the proposal since he was an aspiring martial arts fighter but lacked any good rivals to keep him on his toes.

Ichika didn't meet Rakan until a whole week later when he was going home after one of his afternoon training sessions, Rakan suddenly popped up delivering a sharp kick towards his chest. Ichika had blocked the attack with his arms, and soon found himself regretting it as his already sore muscles was placed under more strain. Ichika managed to last five whole minutes before Rakan had stopped and congratulated him for lasting that long after surviving training from Yuuki.

Now that Ichika thought about it, fighting Rakan had made him develop his own unarmed battle style to compensate if he couldn't draw his sword for any reason. After all, what would he do if he lost his sword in battle?

Ichika soon found himself in headlock as Rakan placed his arms around his neck, "Man, don't be so stiff! Seeing you deep in thought really doesn't suit you."

"Eh, he, he... Anyway, how's your martial arts going?"

"All good, still unbeatable as always. With you gone, no one's giving me a proper challenge." Rakan said arrogantly. Knowing him however, it was probably true.

"Sorry, since I study in IS Academy now, I have to remain there whenever there's school."

Ichika apologized. Honestly, he really needed a male friend in IS Academy. It always felt awkward that he was the only male student in the whole school. Then again, the chances of that happening is extremely unlikely. He was an anomaly after all, he seemingly disproves the notion that only females were able to pilot IS.

"Okay, you kids can go out and catch-up." Rakan's father said as he headed further into his shop, "I'll handle things from here. Just make sure you get back soon, alright?"

"Alright, pops! See you later!" Rakan waved at his father and pulled Ichika along.

* * *

><p><em>A Few Minutes Later...<em>

"You were going to leave in a matter of two days and you hadn't visited me! I thought we were friends!" Tears comically streamed down Rakan's face.

"Ah, well, I... I seriously thought that you'd ambush me at some point during the week." Ichika said honestly, "So I figured you'd come to me rather than the other way around. Your house is rather far from mine."

"I guess I do ambush you at the most unlikeliest of times..." Rakan agreed resuming his forms.

Ichika and Rakan was currently in the city park going through martial arts form. There was a distinct lack of people in the park which removed any restraint that Rakan had from doing martial arts forms in public.

It had started out as a simple talk, but Rakan couldn't quite sit still enough (walking and moving one's mouth was still considered doing 'nothing' in Rakan's book) and made Ichika do forms with him.

"There was some racket a few days back... some said it was an IS. Do you know anything about it?"

Ichika nodded, "It was sent to attack me."

If there was one person that Ichika could talk to freely aside from Yuuki, it was Rakan. He was one of the few people that knew everything about his training and someone he could confide in. His sister was often out trying to make a living for the both of them that he couldn't quite confide to her his insecurities.

Rakan gave a low whistle as they started to face opposite directions, "It started already?"

"Yeah."

Rakan had already given him his own input when he saw how Shinsei Tenka worked from Yuuki. He had already said that with how powerful Shinsei Tenka was, those professional kendo players had nothing on it. He had also emailed him a mere hour after the incident that showed to the world that he was capable of using an IS with the end result of painting a bigger target mark on his person.

"Damn, so coming out like this in a deserted area is pretty suicidal, huh?"

Rakan and Ichika were now back to back, Rakan in his battle form while Ichika had one of his hand holding his katana and another in front of him in case he couldn't draw it fast enough.

"There's three opponents."

"All of which are female." Rakan added.

Ichika sweatdropped. He still couldn't figure out how Rakan could tell just by _smelling_ the air around him what the gender of the person was. Seeing as Yuuki had always made a point to interrupt their talks whenever Ichika had asked how he had figured it out. She usually muttered about 'protecting his innocence' after interrupting the conversation.

"So that means we have potential IS users..."

If that was true, then they don't stand a chance in a fight like this. A single IS could take down a small army on its own after all, and he doubted that Rakan could punch through the absolute barrier of an IS.

After a moment of silence, three females wearing a black suit with sunglasses stepped into the clearing, each one were in a formation around them. They were all wearing the same uniform as that of the attacker a few days ago.

"Orimura Ichika." The one in the center of the formation spoke, "You are coming with us."

Judging by the looks of the person and how there's a small patch on one of her eyes, she must be the one to have ambushed him a few days ago.

"Do you think we can strike them down before they summon there IS?"

Rakan however, was not paying any attention to them, as he whispered to Ichika.

"I don't think we can unless we catch them completely off guard." Ichika replied to Rakan before facing the newcomers, "What do you want with me?"

"We have come here as per orders of our master."

"You do know that so long as he's a student of IS Academy that master of yours has no say on whether he should meet up with him or not, right?"

Ichika stared incredulously at Rakan.

"What? I did read that book you threw when you went to IS Academy."

_'So that's where that book went...'_

"This does not concern you boy." Came the harsh reply of the de facto leader of the group.

"I'm afraid he's right ma'am." Ichika agreed with his friend's words, "Unless you have the approval of IS Academy, then what you're attempting to do is illegal."

The woman shook her head, "Then you leave u-"

Before she could finish her words, Ichika and Rakan leaped into action.

In a matter of two long strides Ichika and Rakan had reached two of the women that surrounded them and proceeded to knock them out with a sharp punch towards the gut. The two women instantly fell to the ground unconscious.

The third woman however, immediately activated her IS and in a second she was riding a close ranged IS that utilized a giant axe.

Rakan gave a low whistle as he faced the third woman while Ichika was crouched down at the woman he knocked out.

"How long will it take for you to borrow that girl's IS?"

"Give me half a minute."

Rakan cracked his neck and slowly walked towards the woman, "I don't think I can hold out any longer than 10 seconds, so do it quickly. She isn't even going to be aiming at me you know!"

Ichika nodded as he rummaged through the woman's suit ignoring the fact that under any other circumstances this would have been pretty perverted.

The woman dashed towards Ichika's direction intent on finishing this as quickly as possible. Rakan immediately placed himself in between Ichika and through sheer strength, managed to deflect the IS from Ichika's general location. The woman however was only mildly annoyed at the attack and instead, she soar through the skies to completely avoid Rakan and descended towards Ichika.

"Ichika!"

Rakan knew he couldn't block that in anyway, so he called out towards his friend in hopes he could make it out in time.

Ichika eventually found the inactive form of the IS at the woman's breast pocket under the form of a ring. When he noticed that Rakan had called out to him, and the fact that a shadow was looming above him, Ichika immediately pushed the unconscious body of the woman out of the way as he placed the ring on.

He wasn't fast enough.

A deep gash caused by the opponent's axe marked Ichika's back and blood began to freely come out of the wound, but Ichika did not falter.

He did not scream.

The pain was blinding. It was as if every sensation other than the pain was numbed

He would not fall unconscious.

If he was to fall unconscious now then there's no telling what would happen next. His expression set in grim determination, Ichika activated the IS. He needed to finish the battle quickly before he lost consciousness.

He hadn't even noticed that the woman was also surprised at actually hurting him and had froze.

In a flash of light Ichika was soon clad into what seemed like a modified version of the Uchigane training IS, but it had a red and black color scheme and had two wing-like appendages on its back.

Brandishing the first weapon that he noticed within the slots, Ichika used it to cleave the arm that held the axe.

The woman was far too surprised at the play of events. Before she could even gain a foothold under the new situation, Ichika had disappeared from her sight and had destroyed her thrusters and her IS's legs in a few seconds. Before she knew it, her IS had deactivated and the target's friend had delivered a sharp punch towards her gut.

Ichika had used a Shinsei Tenka form to destroy the woman's IS but in doing so, had made his recent injury even more severe, blinding him with the sheer pain.

Deactivating his IS, he immediately fell to the ground, unable to support himself. He could vaguely notice that Rakan was coming to his aid, but he soon lost consciousness.

Thus ends the fifth day of Ichika's vacation.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

I honestly feel like I'm missing something important in this chapter... oh well. This chapter is quite long... so in the off chance that I don't update during the usual time of the month, then please excuse me since I've been having my own problems recently which leaves with less writing time since I tend to focus on relieving my problems first.

If the name of the new OC doesn't clue you in to who I based the character on, then I'll be _surprised_. No, really.

Pairings is still the same so far (the one I stated in the very first chapter author notes). I'm not sure what the chances are of Ichika reciprocating it (at least until much, much later on) since I'm not confident with my ability to write Romance. Oh, he won't be dense, just that... well you'll see.

Anyway review! And tell me what you guys think.


	14. End of Break

"Kid, that had to be the dumbest thing you've done."

Ichika's eyes fluttered open and noticed that the ceiling above him was definitely not of his house, and unless Hisoji had broke into his home and redecorated his room then chances are this was not his house.

Ichika turned his head to see that Hisoji was sitting by the side of his bed eating a pocky stick.

"Hisoji-san?"

Ichika tried to sit up, but a sharp painfrom his back prevented him from moving. Upon closer inspection of his current state, he noticed that he wasn't wearing his tattered t-shirt anymore. He was now only wearing his pants and bandages was wrapped around his chest.

"You better not move kid. Your back has a shallow but long cut so we applied some bandages and medicine, if you move though, you'll reopen your wound."

"W - where's Rakan? Is he alright?" He managed to breath out before allowing himself to get a good look at his condition.

Hisoji smiled at Ichika's words.

"Always looking after someone else safety, huh? Don't worry he's by the living room talking to his father by the phone. You guys did spend the night here after all, and if you're wondering why you aren't in the hospital, let's just say it's to keep people who don't know of your circumstances in the dark."

Ichika moved his head a bit to indicate that he agreed with his sentiment.

"How did we get here anyway?"

He doubt that Rakan knew Hisoji before yesterday.

"Well, I noticed four oddly clothed women entering the park yesterday, which mind you, was closed for the day."

Ichika internally winced. He and Rakan didn't actually entered the park through the entrance. They opted to hop above the walls of the park instead of going around towards the entrance. It was a habit that they formed a year ago.

"Anyway, I sort of lost them since I made sure no one saw me enter the park since I look pretty suspicious as it is."

If someone that saw Hisoji didn't know about how loaded he was, they would have thought that he was a drunkard at first glance.

"I guess that's true." Ichika agreed without thinking.

"Hey! That's rude!"

"Well it is true that master looks like one, but he can't even hold his alcohol." A new voice added.

Ichika glanced at the newcomer. The person in question was a female of about Chifuyu's height and had a dark brown hair that reached just past her shoulder. She was wearing a maid uniform that left very little to the imagination. She had a monotone like voice and had a very high class feel that one would associate with the servants of the rich. It was a complete contrast to how Hisoji carried himself.

"I think it would be more appropriate to call him a pervert than a drunkard."

"Is that anyway to treat your master?" Hisoji quipped, his eyes twitching.

"If you would carry yourself with much more pride then maybe I would have more respect for you." She replied scathingly.

Hisoji waved her off, "Yes, yes. I'm definitely not an ideal master. Anyway, prepare lunch for us will ya?"

The maid sighed, "Yes, master."

The maid dropped off a basket of first aid by the table in front of the bed that Ichika was in and headed out of the room.

Seeing the look that Ichika had right now, he decided to explain.

"She's Stella Eien. A maid that my old man hired for me. She totally has no respect for me, but I just can't get rid of her. Though she's really good with taking care of the household chores and cooking. So I live with it. It also helps that I can make her wear things of my choosing."

Hisoji began to laugh like a perverted old man.

Ichika decided not to comment.

"Anyway... where was I? Oh right, when I noticed an IS flying high above and descending down, I knew something was wrong. When I had arrived there, another woman had knocked out your friend over there and had taken her comrades out of the clearing."

Ichika was sent into deep thought with that piece of information. Why didn't the fourth figure kidnap him when there was possibly no one to stop her? He doubted that it was because of Hisoji since he mentioned that the woman was already on the way out before he arrived. Could that fourth person just have been an observer?

"By the way, why did you steal one of the girl's IS anyway? Don't you have your own?"

Ichika began to laugh nervously, regretting it immediately as he winced at the effort, "That's partly the reason why I was sent into a week vacation away from the Academy. My IS needed repairs so I was sent out of IS Academy."

Hisoji began to rummage through his pockets once he heard this, after fishing out a familiar ring he tossed it to him.

"I had a contact of mine check over that ring if there's any sort of tracker on it. Thankfully, she didn't find any. You better keep it as a means to keep you safe if your primary IS broke again."

After seeing Ichika nod, Hisoji stood up from his seat and headed out of his room.

Ichika took a closer look at the ring that he had obtained from the woman. Oddly enough, it fit him like a glove. It was like the ring was tailor made for him. There was also the fact that this was far too large for someone like the woman he had gotten it from. He guessed that it may have changed to suit him, but he was pretty sure that it hadn't yet.

Removing those thoughts from his mind, he pocketed the ring and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

* * *

><p>"Do you think it was part of her plan?" Stella asked as Hisoji left where Ichika slept.<p>

"No, definitely not." Hisoji replied, "Not everything went as planned, but the purpose of the attack was accomplished."

Stella nodded, "I'm surprised that Amakusa-sama had such connections."

"Chances are, it's probably not because Amakusa-sama wanted to have such connection in the first place. Knowing that woman, she probably got interested with Amakusa-sama once she got whiff of the fact that she started training that boy. In fact, the next step towards that boy's growth would be devised solely by that woman. She won't kill him, but she has no qualms on getting him injured to further his growth... or to further entertain herself."

"No pain, no gain, huh?"

Hisoji could only grimace.

* * *

><p>It was a few hours later when Ichika had awoke from his sleep. The pain from his back had subsided a fair bit that it allowed him to move without needing to grit his teeth to endure it. That medicine was fast acting indeed.<p>

"Here's your food Orimura-san."

Stella placed a tray of food next to the bed that Ichika resided in.

"Will you be able to eat it by yourself?"

Ichika sat up and resisted the urge to wince from the pain from his back. He hadn't moved as much as he had now in the last few hours, so aside from the pain there was an incessant need to scratch at his wound. He guessed it was due to the fact that whatever Hisoji had applied, had accelerated the natural healing factor of his body.

"Uh, yeah... I think I can handle it."

"If you need any help, feel free to call me."

Stella bowed and left the room.

Ichika slowly moved over to the table and looked over at the content of the tray.

"Wow, it's like something you'd expect from a rich person's house..."

The tray itself held high quality food that could be commonly found within a gourmet restaurant. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought that Hisoji did a take out or he lived right next to a gourmet restaurant.

"Pretty impressive, huh?"

Ichika looked at the door and noticed that Rakan was leaning on the door frame.

"Rakan! You didn't get hurt, did you?"

Rakan shook his head, "No, I'm alright. I just got a lesson knocked into me."

Though he didn't say it, Ichika knew that Rakan was beating himself up for losing awareness on his surrounding and being more alert. He believed it was essentially his fault that Ichika had gotten hurt and furthermore, he was knocked out by a woman that wasn't even using an IS – she had taken advantage of his momentary lapse of attention. If the person was aimed to kill them, they wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

"You're leaving tomorrow, right?"

Ichika nodded as he took a bite from the steak. He hadn't eaten food since yesterday lunch so he was pretty hungry.

"I'll get your stuff for you and place it here. I doubt you can move fast enough if you got ambushed again. So pass me your keys and I'll get it for you."

"Sorry for being such a bother." Ichika apologized as he tossed him his keys.

"Nah, don't mention it. It's what friends do, right?"

* * *

><p>"Does the test please you?"<p>

In a dark room in one of the many buildings in the city near to IS Academy, a meeting was taking place. It was between a man of European decent and a Japanese woman with long pink hair.

"It would have been better if you didn't injure him." She replied with a huff.

"My apologies, we had not expected the man to react that way. But the item that you had wanted delivered to him has been given to him..." He hesitated a bit before speaking once again, "But isn't it a bit risky?"

"Risky? What do you mean?" She was now smiling.

"That he would alert his sister or even IS Academy of the existence of such an item."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't tell anybody." Judging by her tone, she was completely sure of her statement.

"How would you know? And why did you give it to him?"

"To answer your first question, it is because his sister would find out that he's in much bigger trouble than she had expected. No doubt it would give him the feeling that he's involving his sister in something that has nothing to do with her. As for the second question, I want to give him an added insurance of surviving those who would come to abduct him."

This time the woman directed a cold stare at the man before her.

The man coughed nervously a bit taken aback at the cold look that graced the normally cheerful woman, "You have my word that we will not be one of those people, an agent of ours will only observe and gather data about him. Nothing more."

"Well, then if that's the case," The woman returned to her usual jovial tone, "I won't tell IS Academy anything about what you're planning."

"Does that mean...?"

"It doesn't mean that I won't intervene in some way, but I only promise that you're agent wouldn't be compromised through me. Though I doubt a certain teacher in there would be fooled by such an appearance."

"Orimura, huh?" The man frowned.

"If you are truly planning on just sending an agent to gather data and observe, then Chifuyu wouldn't take any action. If your agent does endanger her brother, then I offer no help there. After all, you've broken the agreement."

With that, the woman left the meeting room.

* * *

><p><em>The Next Day...<em>

With short debilitating steps, Ichika made it to the train station. His body was unnaturally stiff due to the injury, but he made sure that he didn't show any obvious outward signs so he slowly tried to force his body to become casual, which he wasn't quite sure was a good idea.

"You alright there, Ichika?" Rakan asked, as he dropped Ichika's bag and waited alongside him fro the arrival of the train.

It was 5PM already, and they had missed the last train by mere minutes so they were out for a long wait. Ichika originally planned to go somewhere after lunch, but decided to put it until late afternoon since he still felt pain every time he moved. He was also hoping to put on hold his IS training. Since there wasn't any known battles that he'll be participating in on for the next few days, night training is highly unlikely.

"Yeah. Although I hope that the pain goes away or at least becomes more tolerable. I'm not sure I can hide this very well under my sister's eyes." Ichika grimaced.

"Right, your sister still scares me you know." Rakan nodded his head knowingly, "I'm pretty sure she can make me concede in a straight out fight just by concentrating her killing intent on me. If I couldn't see her and couldn't smell her, I would have probably have thought that the person I had met back then was a man!"

Ichika laughed nervously at that.

"I'll keep in contact with that old man to see if we can warn you ahead of time if something is happening." Rakan nodded to himself. "I'll probably be useless against IS fights, but I can help if it's other sword practitioners coming to get you."

Ichika didn't need to ask that Rakan was still bothered in being powerless against an IS. He could understand it, but he was beating himself up for no reason since it was already commendable that he could even distract an IS user for a few seconds even though he blindsided his opponent.

There's also the fact that no one actually knows what makes him the only person to pilot an IS. He could wield any IS that he had come across which is normal for females, but an impossibility for males. Except for himself though.

"I'll be counting on you, then."

Rather than trying to bolster Rakan's spirits in finding a way to beat IS users, he decided that Rakan should focus his time in something that he could feasibly succeed in. Besides, IS users attacking him is such a rare occurrence that it might not ever happen and in the rare instances that they would, he should be the one handling the problem not someone else.

Rakan noted the unsaid thought, but nevertheless grinned at him.

"Of course!"

* * *

><p><em>Later that evening...<em>

It was about 6PM when he had finally arrived at IS Academy. He hadn't eaten dinner yet, but it seemed like all his body wanted to do was just sleep.

Once he notified his sister of his arrival, he headed to his room.

If he had been more lucid, he would have realized that Houki was looking at him strangely. She didn't utter a word, but only quietly observed him.

"I'm going to get an early dinner, do you want to come?"

He was tired enough as is, but that shouldn't be a reason for him to be rude.

"Sure."

Dinner was a quiet affair. It seemed like Rin and Cecilia hadn't gotten whiff of his arrival yet, which he was somewhat glad for, considering his current state. Again, he didn't quite realize the somewhat inquisitive look that Houki was sending his way, but he was already trying to make himself look as if there's nothing wrong.

Once he arrived back to his room, he immediately reapplied his bandages in the bathroom before heading to sleep. He only hoped he'd be ready for the next few days.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Yeah, I've been a bit busy with school and all. Final exams and such had just occurred and I didn't want to send out a chapter during the small break in the first week of April since I completely allocated my whole time to 'enjoy vacation'. I could have just simply updated the next week, but finals began and... yeah.

Don't know when the next chapter will be out, but rest assured that it will come. I'm just not making any promises that it would come out next month because I want to maximize my break time and I haven't had an actual summer break since entering college.

Time to address certain reviews... To the anonymous reviewers: Just base her look on that woman you see with Ichika (the one that wore a hat) during the time that he was unconscious at the 12th episode of the anime. And yes, I know the existence of Baka-tsuki, but I still haven't read the novel due to my laziness... I will read on it when I miss something important but for the time being, I'll be focusing on details I can get from the wiki and the anime.

Anyway, review! Comments and/or constructive criticism is welcome! It's what motivates me to keep on writing!


	15. Boy Meets Boy

_Two days later: Evening..._

"You'll be moving." Yamada-sensei said with a smile after entering Ichika and Houki's room.

His wound had recovered a fair bit, and now it was only mildly painful and was incessantly itchy. So it wasn't odd to find himself twitching at various points in class. Scratching the wound would be useless (and if he did manage to, counter productive). Aside from the inquisitive looks he would get from Houki and to a lesser extent, his own sister, life was back to normal.

At least, until today.

"Huh?"

Seeing the lost look on both Ichika and Houki's face, Yamada decided to elaborate.

"We've gotten the room matter solved. Shinono-san will be moving to a new room."

So that's what she meant.

"W-wait! Does that have to be done immediately?"

Houki seemed to be a bit hesitant about the matter. Ichika didn't know what to make of it. Isn't it suppose to be a good thing?

"Well, that would be so. Since having a mature boy and girl living in the same room forever is a little... You find it uncomfortable too, right?"

"N-no, I'm..." Houki glanced over at Ichika.

Seeing the look that was directed towards him, he decided to placate her.

"Don't worry about me. I will still wake up properly without you. I'll even brush my teeth."

Apparently it seemed to be the wrong thing to say.

"Sensei, I will be changing rooms immediately!"

"A-alright." Yamada-sensei said, a bit taken aback by the sudden change of choice.

In a matter of a few seconds, the door slammed shut with Houki taking all of her belongings.

Ichika stared at the shut door and contemplated the sudden change of mood.

"Now that I think about it... I made it sound like she was my care taker."

Ichika facepalmed himself for executing such a stupid mistake.

Seeing that he was now alone, he decided that he should get some sleep, he'll apologize properly once he met up with Houki tomorrow. This would probably the first time in a whole week he could sleep without any fear of being attacked. It also helped that his IS was back into full working condition. It was also due to the shape of his IS's innate form that allowed him to hide the ring that he had obtained from the attackers a few days ago.

Ichika had kept the incidents that had taken place in his one week break a secret. So he did his best to hide the wound he had sustained a secret from everyone. He only hoped that it would recover before some incident forced it out in the open. This was his problem after all, and he didn't want to cause unneeded stress to his friends and his sister. It was also a good thing that he brought the medical supplies to treat his injuries before hand. His sister would have found out if he had been going into the infirmary much more than necessary.

Before he could unpack his clothing for sleep and the medical items to change his bandage, he heard a knock on his door.

Slowly walking towards the door, he opened it.

It was Houki.

"Did you forget something?"

"I-I have something to tell you." Houki said. She was a bit flustered.

Ichika merely nodded. It seemed that she was serious about something.

"About the grade level individual tournament next month... I-if I become the champion... Y-you'll go out with me!"

"W-what?"

The meaning of that was apparently not lost on Ichika - which apparently blew away his thoughts on apologizing to her. He didn't even remember how the conversation ended once he finally regained his bearings.

* * *

><p>The next day had come far too fast for Ichika's liking.<p>

If what Houki had said last night had been any indication, it would be obvious that she held him in a more intimate light. If this was what the earlier signs meant, then that meant he had unconsciously (and unwillingly) attracted the attention of at least four females (three in IS Academy and one outside).

Now he was regretting ever reading light novels and mangas in his free time. Who knew that those _fictional_ books held an ounce of truth within them?

Oh, he could be wrong – and he almost hoped he was – but there was a feeling within his head that was telling him that he _wasn't_.

He almost wished that he never tried to figure out how a female's mind worked. He may be hated for it, but he wouldn't be thinking of such a stressful dilemma. He'd rather face those who were attempting to kidnap/kill him than his current predicament.

"Good Morning..."

Ichika greeted a bit glumly as he entered the noisy classroom.

If it was in fact true that the girls held him in a more intimate light, he should first analyze his own feelings regarding the matter.

It only took a second for him to realize that, no – he felt that he wasn't quite ready for anything serious as of yet. Whether it was because of the troubles he was currently facing or the responsibilities that he had unconsciously placed higher than his own well being, he felt that he was not emotionally ready for such a thing.

There was also the fact that he believed those girls, his friends, should deserve someone better than him. After all, all he had ever done for his sister was bring more trouble to her. Being kidnapped as to be used as blackmail material and now, the target of many nation's eyes due to the fact that he was the only male IS user. There was also people going after him due to his connections with Amakusa Yuuki. If he didn't resolve those things first, he could never see himself settling down with anyone.

It certainly didn't occur to Ichika that those same girls would gladly help him out with his troubles.

The chattering soon stopped the moment he entered the classroom, which made him jump out of his depression. He hoped nobody noticed his current mood.

"Why is everybody staring at me?"

True enough, the chattering stopped just when he had entered the room and they were _all_ staring at him. He internally winced and made sure to control whatever was going in his mind from escaping through his expressions and voice.

Before he could mull over what exactly he had done to warrant such attention, he was lightly pushed to the side as Chifuyu declared the beginning of homeroom.

Once everyone was seated, Yamada-sensei immediately declared that they had received a new transfer student.

As the new student stepped in, several thoughts began to run throughout everybody's heads.

If Ichika had been questioning the existence of Bishounen* in real life, he found himself losing that belief as the person in front of him was pretty much the embodiment of such a term.

"I'm Charles Dunoa. I come from France. Nice to meet you all." The bishounen said and ended the greetings with a warm smile.

"A male?" One of the students in the class asked.

If Ichika hadn't known any better, he would have thought that the transfer student was a female with the voice and look as clear indications.

"Yes. I heard there was someone in the same situation as me here. So I transferred from my country..."

Any thing that he was about to say was drowned by the loud squeals of the female students.

"A male student!"

"And its the second one!"

"And he's come to our class!"

"And he's handsome the type you want to protect too!"

"Settle down! Be quiet everyone!"

Chifuyu's voice quickly settled down everyone in a matter of a few seconds.

_'As expected of Chifuyu-nee...'_

Was the thought running through Ichika's head at the blatant show of command.

"We will be doing IS practice together with Class 2. Everyone change and gather up at school ground 2. Also Orimura."

"Yes?"

Ichika perked up at being addressed.

"Look over Dunoa since you're a boy too." Chifuyu turned towards the whole class, "That's it, move out!"

Charles moved towards Ichika just as everybody stood up from their desk.

"Are you Orimura-kun? Nice to meet you, I'm-"

"That's fine and all, but first let's get out of here. The girls will start changing, so..."

Ichika grabbed hold of Charles hand and lead him out of the classroom. He didn't notice the sudden change in expression that Charles had as soon as he grabbed his hand. Nor did he notice the expression of the girls when he left the classroom.

"We change at the changing room at the Arena. We'll have to make this move for every practice session, so get used to it."

Girl's often changed in the classroom and this would have been no problem, if it weren't for the fact that Ichika had been the only boy in campus. So every time that it was time to change, he would go ahead towards the changing room in the arena (which is obviously devoid of students at the time he would be changing) so he could change. It was a bit time consuming, but at least he changed faster than the girls.

"O-okay."

Ichika blinked at the sudden change in Charles actions. He seemed much more confident in class than the way he is now.

"Why are you acting so strangely? Need to go to the bathroom?"

"I-it's not like that!"

Before they could talk more, a girl had popped up in front of them.

"Rumored student detected!"

"And he's with Orimura-kun!"

"W-what?"

Ichika turned around and noticed they were surrounded. He must have been more disturbed by last night's revelations for him to be surrounded before he realized any signs of such a thing happening.

"Heard that?"

"They're this way!"

"Come out, everyone!"

"Look they're holding hands!"

"Orimura-kun is nice with his black hair, but blond is nice too!"

If this kept up, he'd be late for practice! He seriously did not want to hear what Chifuyu-nee would say to him if he got into a similar situation a few months ago. He also did not want for Charles to feel that kind of reprimand either.

"Let's go!"

Ichika pulled Charles and turned down another hallway that was thankfully, devoid of a wall of girls.

"Wait! Let me at least get a shot!"

"Why is everyone making such a fuss?" Charles asked, completely bewildered by the actions of his fellow students.

"Because we're the only men who can operate an IS as of now!"

Since he had been here for a few months now, everyone had gotten used to his presence. But with a new male student, things were beginning to turn out just like how it had been a few months ago.

"Ah, yes, you're right..."

Ichika noted Charles' expression when he had said that. Maybe he had private training? Surely, he would have felt these kinds of events if he had studied in a school for IS users.

"Anyway, just run for it!"

* * *

><p>The two eventually reached the arena's changing room, after having lost the girls. They had wasted five whole minutes just trying to lose the girls. So they only had a few minutes left to change.<p>

"I'm sorry if I've given you trouble so soon."

"It's fine. It's great that you came though." Ichika said honestly.

"Is it really?"

Ichika had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that he would be the only male in campus for the duration of his stay. With the arrival of Charles, another male, it was a most welcome relief.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Orimura Ichika. Call me Ichika, please." He introduced.

"Yes, nice to meet you too. Call me Charles."

Ichika glanced over at the watch. They only had two minutes left.

"Crap! We've got to change immediately!"

Ichika began to remove his T-shirt in order to change. Charles however, immediately turned around and covered his face. It was great that he had done so, otherwise he would have noticed the bandages that covered the upper part of his chest.

"You better change quickly or you'll be late." Ichika said disregarding Charles odd movements. "Our homeroom is really strict with being punctual and..."

"O-okay, I-I'll change. But don't look this way, okay?"

Now why was he having problems with that? Could it be he was raised in such a high class way that no one ever changed at the same time as him?

"Well, I don't have any intent to stare at you while you change though... whatever it is, just hurry please."

Once Ichika placed on the upper part of his suit, he noticed that Charles was already done changing.

"Woah... you're really fast at changing. Is there some trick on this?"

The clothing was pretty tight, and it really was easy to get it tangled. With his recent injury, it only made putting on the clothing much more difficult.

"N-no, nothing at all." Charles began to laugh nervously.

"Having to get naked to wear this is the difficulty. It gets tangled and..."

He remembered the first time wearing the assigned clothing for the IS. He had spent a whole ten minutes trying to make sure that nothing 'stood' out.

"It gets tangled?"

For some reason, Charles face turned red. It was a strange response... maybe he was saying something that could be misunderstood upon translation? He should resolve to get to know his fellow male IS user after classes ends.

"Oh, that suit seems to be easier to wear."

Ichika commented as he changed the subject. He had a feeling that things will go further downhill should he mention any more. He didn't want to make Charles feel uncomfortable if he was unwittingly saying something weird.

"It's a special model from the Dunoa company."

That name was familiar...

"Your family name is Dunoa too, right?"

"My father is the president. It should be the largest company in France concerning the IS industry."

"I see. You're the president's son, huh?" Ichika nodded to himself, "No wonder."

That may explain why he wasn't used to change with other people present.

"No wonder?"

"Well you seem to have this aura that tells me that you're from a high class family. I understand now."

Charles expression turned dim at this.

* * *

><p>The practice went on without a hitch.<p>

It showed that despite all their abilities now and their personal IS, a teacher with a greater amount of experience can easily dispatch them even in a two on one scenario. This was even highlighted with the fact that the IS she (Yamada-sensei) used to dispatch them was a second generation IS.

With that display, Ichika was pretty confident he would have lost too since it was a ranged IS. After all, if he had trouble fighting Cecilia's IS, then he would be easily defeated with the display that Yamada-sensei showed. He might have a chance if his IS had ranged weaponry, but he wasn't exactly proficient at it and would probably be detrimental than it was helpful.

After practice, Ichika invited Charles to having lunch with him and his friends. Charles is going to be his roommate so he should introduce him to his circle of friends.

It was also at that point he had realized something profound.

Cecilia was a horrible cook.

He didn't have the heart to say so, but how did she manage to make a simple sandwich taste so bad?

After having a mixed blessing lunch (courtesy of Houki and Rin's cooking), classes went on as normal.

"By the way Ichika-san, you mentioned that you did after-school training sessions."

They were now at their room, simply drinking tea as the sun had long set.

"Yeah, it's because I'm not caught up with everyone else."

He made sure not to mention the fact that it was because he didn't bother reading the books given to him. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know he had the ability to pilot an IS! With the way things were going, it would seem like he was a big idiot – having a male classmate to compare to, he hoped he could somehow boost his confidence but it seems like that wouldn't be the case.

"Then can I join in? I have a personal IS too, so I think I'll be of some use."

Although he hadn't quite given up in at least showing that he's a dependable fellow, he didn't see anything wrong with Charles attending their practice sessions. If anything, it would be a great bonding experience.

"Sure." Ichika replied easily.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

*For those that don't know, bishounen is a term that roughly translates to 'Beautiful Boy'. It refers to those that have rather feminine qualities or have an androgynous look despite being a male.

College has started once again, so I've been relatively busy. The lack of reviews on the previous chapter was rather disheartening, so I suppose that contributed to my lack of update last month.

I noticed that the events here seemed rushed (especially in the latter half)... but since I'm assuming that all you readers have at least watched or read Infinite Stratos, elaborating on things where it relatively stayed the same would be rather boring. Like I've said in a chapter before hand, certain things will be skipped as to get into places where there is more changes from canon (or is not canon for that matter). I also took a glance at Volume 2 of the light novel... yeah, this will be following the anime more than the light novel unless otherwise stated.

Next chapter should be out next month around the same time. As always, a review -be it asimple comment or constructive criticism - are entirely welcome!


	16. Ranged Goals

_The next day..._

The following day's early morning seemed to go exactly as the previous day.

Now this wouldn't have been odd, but the fact was, a new student had come the previous day to their class. With that detail known, the class and Yamada-sensei were surprised that two new students had enrolled into their school. One of which, was going to be part of their class.

Sadly, it wasn't another male student.

"This is Laura Bodewig-san, a transfer student from Germany."

Whisperings start to circulate within the room about the odd circumstances.

To Ichika, he only noted the country Germany. If he could recall correctly, that's where Chifuyu taught a few years ago. It filled him with a sort of dread whenever he heard about Germany. Instead of feeling grateful for their assistance on rescuing him, he felt more intimidated by the fact that there was always a price for someone's help.

"E-everyone! Please be quiet! We still haven't finished introducing her yet."

"Say your greetings Laura." Chifuyu suddenly interjected.

"Yes, instructor." She replied quickly.

Well that confirmed it. Whoever this Laura Bodewig person is, this person definitely had been taught by Chifuyu during her brief time in Germany.

"I am Laura Bodewig. That is all."

Laura's eyes slowly moved towards Ichika.

Ichika's ears managed to pick up what she said next, making him stiffen and his body suddenly alert. Laura walked over to his desk, her hand moving towards his face in surprising speed.

But Ichika had already anticipated it and pushed at his desk, making him have his seat precariously perched on its two legs before landing on its four legs once again.

He had effectively avoided a slap headed towards his face.

"Did I do something wrong?" His voice was devoid of any sort of emotion as he stood from his desk and faced her.

The slight widening of the only eye that Laura had showing, hardened as she continued to glare at him.

"I will not accept that you are her brother. I shall never accept it."

Throughout this all, he still didn't know what to think of Houki's proposal two days before.

* * *

><p>It was IS training once again.<p>

He wasn't sure if he should be happy or a bit frustrated since he can't really think deeply about why the new transfer student, Laura Bodewig, seemed to despise him. The last few days had him do practice sessions away from the normal students as the class couldn't really move forward with the amount of animosity in the air, which Ichika noted, was extremely one-sided. When asked to how he was related to the woman that had attempted to slap him and what he did to annoy her, all he could really say was that he didn't know.

He had a suspicion really, but it definitely made no sense to him.

So here he was now, training. These training sessions are more like self-study sessions. As such, people from other classes could all train together so long as they were free during the time period. Since it was free period, and he had planned on doing IS training due to the upcoming Class League Match, his friends obviously wanted to help him.

Now, Ichika was glad that his friends were trying to help him on learning how to use the IS and the moves that come with it, but it was at these times that he realized how... uninformed he was.

"It feels like a swoosh, then bam bang!"

Houki, having learned that he wasn't good at anything that uses terms, was using movements and what he supposed were SFX from mangas to give him a pictorial view of what he should be doing. The fact that it was way too vague, never occurred to Houki.

"You somehow get it; the senses, the senses!"

Rin on the other hand, would comment on what he seemed to be doing right but her explanations as to what to improve on, went over his head.

"While defending, the right half of your body shifts five degrees diagonally upwards toward the front. While evading, it's twenty degrees backwards."

Cecilia's explanation was completely ignored since he didn't even want to think about supposed angles or how the body should move during IS battles.

"O – okay... I'll admit it now," Ichika said as the three finally quieted down enough for him to get a word in, "I don't understand a single word you're trying to say to me!"

"Then we'll explain it once more." The girls weren't at all perturbed by his inability to grasp it. Either they were thinking he was a completely idiot and it was only natural, or it's because somewhere deep down, they knew that they weren't teaching him anything with their methods...

It's probably the former.

Ichika sighed. At this rate, he won't get anything done.

"Ichika."

A new voice called out to him, so he looked towards the voice in favor of ignoring their explanations. This may have been rude, but he really wasn't getting anything other than a headache.

"Will you duel with me? I want to try fighting Byakushiki."

As Ichika had been listening intently to the explanation of the three girls for over an hour now, physical exertion seemed to be a much better course of action for the time being.

"Well, if I understand some of the things you've said or not, we can see it in this practice session right?" Ichika said to the girls.

The girls weren't entirely convinced, but nonetheless conceded.

Practice battles were a frequent affair in IS Academy. But since the majority of the students don't have their own personal IS, when two personal IS are pitted against one another, it become a sort of spectacle.

"Wow, Ichika-kun and Charles-kun are having a battle?"

"Ah! Isn't that Raphael Revive? France's Second Generation IS?"

It was the first time that Ichika had seen Charles' IS. He hadn't really paid any attention to the types of IS out there (though in hindsight, he really should), so he could only visually tell what kind of capabilities the IS might have. Hidden features, and what-not, could only be distinguished once it's used in battle.

Taking out his Yukihiro Nigata, he made sure to keep the power output at none so the weapon's secondary feature wouldn't activate.

"Let's begin, Ichika."

"Okay."

Using that as a signal, the two dashed towards one another.

Once the two reached melee range, Ichika brought his sword down. He was surprised however, to find that Charles merely used what Ichika had previously believed to be a wing armament as a shield. Upon closer inspection, it was different from its counterpart on the right.

Charles attempted to strike using his right fist, but Ichika guarded it with his left arm. Ichika once again tried to do a horizontal slash, which was easily evaded as Charles flew up into the air. Ichika followed suit.

Once they were a certain distance up into the air, Charles finally brought out his first weapon.

It was an SMG.

Evading the upcoming shots by swerving sharply to the right, he immediately began to think of the strategies he had been developing to fight ranged opponents.

Ichika kept his distance as Charles continued to rain bullets down on him, but it was also due to this distance that he could easily avoid the attacks. If he closed in now, without any sort of plan, he wouldn't be able to avoid any of the attacks that would come down on him. After all, he might be blindsided by a weapon that he hadn't seen yet like in the case with his fight with Cecilia and Rin.

"I'm impressed, Ichika. You're the first one that I've seen in person, to dodge bullets at such close range." Charles complimented as his weapon disappeared in a flash of light.

Dodging high speed projectiles was completely different from dodging melee attacks, as he had learned in his previous battles. For one, when dodging melee attacks, he could sufficiently predict what the opponent was going to do according to their muscle movements and how they react according to various situations. Although the latter might seem difficult since chances are, not all opponents would be the same, it still applied as people often react similarly to certain other people.

In the case of projectiles such as guns, there were two things that one often had to pay attention too in order to avoid a bullet or at the very least, know when it will come out of the barrel. The first one being, how tense the muscles were – although this could be easily mistaken when the opponent themselves were panicking or 'jumpy'. The second one would be the finger at the trigger. This in itself has the drawback of being completely useless when the opponent was either too far or too close. If one was too close to the opponent when the trigger is about to be squeezed, the chances of reacting fast enough would be extremely minimal. Too far on the other hand, you wouldn't be able to see the trigger finger anyway.

It was due to this, that Ichika had his eyes on none of those, but instead, he kept his eyes focused on Charles' eyes. While he couldn't feasibly predict when Charles' would fire, he would still be able to know the general area of which he was aiming at. In other words, it was 'predicting the bullet trajectory'.

It wasn't entirely reliable as of yet, but this was when his reaction speed, honed from training with Yuuki, was put to good use.

Ichika didn't reply to Charles' compliment and instead, he rushed in to go in the offense.

In a fight with a melee against a ranged weapon, it's best for the melee to decide the pace of the battle. Furthermore, by reducing the amount of time the opponent has to aim, a melee user could continue attacking with little care for defense.

Charles easily avoided the coming attack and managed to quickly place himself at Ichika's back. As he took out his next weapon, he was surprised to find that Ichika had already recovered from the missed strike and was already in the process of rushing towards him.

A bullet tore through the air from Charles weapon, it's speed, was entirely different from the weapon he had used before.

Ichika twisted his body as fast as he could to avoid the attack.

It was apparently enough, but a bit too close for comfort as it narrowly avoided his head.

Avoiding such an attack at close range, sent gasps of awe through the crowd. Even Houki was surprised at how he had narrowly avoided such an attack.

Continuing onwards, Ichika attempted a horizontal slash towards Charles' chest.

It was an aggressive slash that sacrificed defense for power. If it missed, it would surely be fatal to the user, but those were only under circumstances where both sides used melee weapons or the other side at least used a ranged weapon much like a handgun. Ichika was confident however, that Charles' wouldn't be able to materialize a weapon quickly enough to attack his currently prone form.

His confidence proved to be his downfall.

Charles marginally avoided the first attack and before Ichika could recover to deliver a secondary strike, something from Charles' left arm burst out, and went to strike Ichika's prone form.

The spear like appendage didn't look the least bit lethal when compared to the fold-out form of Yukihiro Nigata, but that was because he didn't know what it's true purpose was.

The spear hit the barrier of his IS and to his utmost surprise, his barrier depleted faster than a direct hit from a ranged an IS. It was due to the rapid speed that his barrier depleted that he remembered a term Houki had mentioned in one of his training sessions. In other words, - 'Shield Pierce.'

Ichika was blown from the sky towards the ground at a rapid speed – but thankfully his barrier had held out to at least cushion the fall.

"Ichika!"

His friends rushed towards him, all of which sported looks of worry and concern at his apparent fall. Even Charles was worried at how he had fallen.

He wasn't exactly unscathed himself, but he merely looked like he had been placed into a washing machine then violently spat out.

"Uuu... I'm fine, a bit dizzy, but fine."

"S-sorry about that, Ichika." Charles' apologized. "I got caught with the flow... You looked so serious out there, that I unconsciously went serious too."

Dusting himself and standing up, Houki walked over to him and pushed an accusing finger on his chest.

"That last attack was completely reckless! What were you thinking?"

Houki had easily seen that he could have won that battle, but had also known that his last attack was completely uncalled for.

"Uhh... I thought... that Charles' didn't have a melee weapon, so uh... yeah."

It was a pathetic reply, one that Houki immediately bulldozed over.

"Haven't you learned anything from your previous matches?"

The look that Cecilia and Rin was enough to tell him that it was useless on making any sort of justification for his actions.

* * *

><p>Once Byakushiki was sufficiently recharged again, they returned to training once more. They still had quite a bit of time left, so Charles' decided to help Ichika some more.<p>

"...I suppose I could agree with you that having close range as my only means of fighting is a real downside to my IS."

Ichika swung his sword about before he dematerialized it along with the wings of his Byakushiki.

"Does Byakushiki not have an equalizer?"

As Ichika had learned after Byakushiki's maintenance, he had at least two bus slots in his equalizer. One slot held his Yukihiro Nigata, and the other one was apparently inaccessible to him. He had no idea what it meant and when he later asked Charles about it, he wasn't sure on it either.

"Yeah it has. But there are no bus slots open."

Charles' nodded, already having drawn that conclusion.

"It's just a guess, but the capacity might have been expended on a one-off ability."

"One-off?"

This was a completely new term to him.

"It's an ability that occurs naturally when IS pilots are in maximum synergy with their IS. In your case, however, you haven't really used anything like that have you? So maybe that unknown inaccessible slot must be your one-off ability."

If that was the case, then he must really not have connected well with his IS yet. Perhaps, that may be the reason as to why he found Byakushiki slow during that fight with the Black IS.

"Hm, now that I think about it, your explanations are much easier to understand, Charles!" Ichika complimented, oblivious to the looks of contempt directed at him.

"Well, then let's move on to something new!"

Ichika and Charles moved towards the long ranged practice simulation by activating the target projections.

"Here take my rifle." Charles said, materializing her weapon.

"I thought that you can't use weapons from other IS?"

It was one of the few things he had picked up from a book he had read during the last day of vacation when he was stuck recovering in the bed at Hisoji's house. He supposed it was convenient that IS can't exactly have their own weapon turned against their user.

"Normally, but if the owner unlocks it, everyone can use it as long as they're registered."

"Ah, so that's the case."

This opened some new possibilities for his IS if he could link his bus slots with his other IS. It probably won't be a good idea to do it in front of many people, due to the questions that he can't feasibly answer without revealing his second IS, but in emergency situations it would be a great help.

Charles handed him the rifle, he then taught him how to handle the rifle correctly.

"So it goes like that, understand?"

Ichika nodded.

Once he started shooting with the rifle, he managed to hit the target nearest to the center the whole time. It earned him 43 points out of a maximum of 100 points since he couldn't hit the rest under the allotted time limit. But he nevertheless got the feeling of it.

"Oh..."

"How is it?"

"I think I've got the feeling of it. Anyway it's the feeling of 'speed', right?"

The speed he had felt when pulling the trigger was essentially different from the speed he felt when rushing in with his sword, but with a gun, the speed to which it reached the target was what he had felt. It was different with a sword, as the feeling of 'power' isn't exactly felt.

He was broke of his musings when he heard a student point out another personal IS had entered the field.

Looking up, he noticed a Black IS. Unlike the Black IS he and Rin had fought, it wasn't bulky and if he had to hazard a guess, it was probably a long range type or at the very least, a close range speed type. According to the comments of the crowd, it seemed like the IS in question is a third generation IS.

A sense of hostility was once again in the air due to the fact that whenever Ichika and Laura were found anywhere near each other, the feeling would seemingly manifest.

"Orimura Ichika." Laura said.

"What is it?" Ichika asked as he handed Charles rifle back to him.

He had a feeling, that with the way things are now, some sort of confrontation would take place as the only person that Laura followed like a commander was no where in the vicinity, there were no teachers either.

"It seems you also possess a personal IS. That makes things faster." She said, "Fight me."

"There is no reason to."

"Even if you don't," Laura said, using the informal and rude version of 'you' to refer to Ichika, "I do."

"It doesn't have to be now, right? The class league match is coming soon, so let's do it then."

"In that case..."

Ichika didn't even think twice as the feeling of hostility heightened, taking out Yukihiro Nigata, he activated its fold-out ability and cleaved at the projectile apparently heading his way. The two halves brushed past him as it impacted the arena wall.

Charles had also acted accordingly and had brought out his own weaponry.

"Suddenly challenging someone to a fight and even firing when he's had his back turned, German's must be pretty hot headed!"

If Laura was in any way alarmed with the fact that she's probably going to fight a 2 on 1 fight, she didn't show it. Instead, she still kept her composure and actually looked more angry at the fact that someone is going to join in on their fight.

"To think that the likes of a second generation French IS is standing in my way."

"It's probably more mobile than your third generation German model, which still can't be mass produced." Charles countered.

Before any more could be said, the voice of an instructor rang throughout the arena.

"You students over there! What do you think you're doing!"

Judging by the fact that the instructor probably had just come around and had no idea as to whether whatever is happening is a practice match or not, someone must have alerted the instructor of the confrontation happening.

"Hmph. Let's end it here for today, shall we?"

Laura's IS immediately dematerialized, while Ichika allowed his weapon to go back to its standard form.

Laura sent one more scathing look towards Ichika before heading out of the arena. Not even giving a second glance to the amount of looks directed her way.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Originally planned to submit this chapter two days ago, but things keep cropping up. School has been a source of stress lately, so I've had little time to write for any of my stories.

Anyway, this is it for now. The next update _should be_ next month at around the same time. If there's any grammatical errors, feel free to alert me to it.


	17. Nearing Clash

Ichika sat by the lockers as he replayed the events that had happened recently within his head. Throughout it all, he still couldn't discern as to why Laura hated him so much. He had never met her until a few days ago and the only thing he could think of as a possible reason, is that his sister did something. But if that was the case, why did Laura continue to treat his sister with utmost respect?

It made no sense at all.

"Ichika, are you alright?"

The locker rooms were currently empty besides the two of them. As it stands, the locker room are of mixed gender (since it was only originally for females as back then, male IS users were unheard of) and during class time, the times to which male would enter, would be different from the females. Since it wasn't class period, Ichika allowed all the girls to go first and finish before entering himself. Charles had also waited beside him for obvious reasons.

"Ah, thank you for backing me up Charles." Ichika said as he finally stood up and began changing.

"I – I'll be heading back up to our room and shower there."

"Eh? You're always like that. Don't tell me you dislike changing with me?" Ichika asked. He certainly hoped he didn't give out a bad impression. It would be no good to be not on good terms with his roommate.

"I-it's not really like that..."

"Well it does seem like that. Come on, we should change together every once and a while."

Well, Rakan and Dan said it was part of male bonding so Ichika obviously wanted to increase his bond with his only male classmate.

It was at this point that Charles ran from the locker room, screaming.

"Maybe it only applied to people in Japan." Ichika wondered as he watched Charles' retreating form.

* * *

><p>After hearing a potential reason as to why Laura Bodewig hated him, it opened the possibility that whether someone wanted to or not, things that they haven't considered before might be affected negatively. Like Yuuki, Chifuyu's actions, be it good or bad, could have affected some other people negatively and may have seen things differently as they had a different perspective of events. When he had accidentally eavesdropped at Laura and Chifuyu's conversation, it left him feeling conflicted... he couldn't quite say that Laura's reasoning for hating him was petty, he didn't know the true extent of how Laura's life was affected by Chifuyu.<p>

With that thought in mind, it was probably the reason as to why his brain had temporarily shut down when he realized that Charles, after barging into his shower to hand in a new shampoo bottle (since he remembered that there's no more shampoo after using it this morning), was actually a _girl._

That may have explained why Charles, at first glance, looked like an extremely handsome bishounen but was in reality, a really beautiful bishoujo. It may also explain why she didn't take to well on his idea of male bonding.

It was several minutes later after Charles had sat herself on her bed that he tried to start up a conversation.

Judging by her expression and tone throughout the talk, he figured that she didn't willingly go to the school as a boy. It was more due to her father's insistence that she needed to go as a boy to gather data from Ichika. As it stands, the French only have 2nd Generation IS unlike the German's who already have 3rd Generations and are on the process of mass producing. The French were working also working on 3rd Generation IS... but it hasn't produced much.

This revelation only served to solidify the fact that whether he wanted it or not, he's going to have many people after him so long as he could pilot an IS.

By the looks of things as Charles' true gender had now been found out by him, Charles' was already prepared to return to France and would no doubt be reprimanded by the president – even if that person was her father.

It took some convincing in his part, but eventually he managed to persuade her to stay in the Academy for her own safety. He'd obviously keep her secret until she herself was comfortable on letting everyone know about it.

* * *

><p>Ichika swung his sword down for what seemed to be the thousandth time that morning.<p>

Summer was approaching, but the cool morning air was still present which at least lessened the amount of sweat that gathered during his morning training. Presently, the morning sun had finally broken through the horizon and a small amount of light permeated through the trees which he used as a cover in case anyone was passing through.

Nowadays, Ichika would often wake up three hours before any of his friends could think of waking him up. Although his roommate (both current and former) knew that he woke up early, they didn't exactly know what he was doing. The one time that Houki came with him to training had him act as incompetent as he could so she wouldn't need to come and train with him until he got to a certain level of competence. Thankfully, it seemed like Houki hadn't come to check on him, otherwise his training would have been slowed down again.

Looking back at his fight with Charles - rather Charlotte – he thought of his reckless last attack that sent him losing a match where he could have actually won. Although the result of the match was because he became overconfident (something that a year ago, Yuuki would quickly beat out of him if the signs were showing), he had a feeling that he could have done something more with such an attack.

As a student of the Shinsei Tenka style, he needed to create his own forms – a form that represent the advancing nature of Shinsei Tenka.

Repeating the movement he had done in the match with Charlotte, he nearly lost balance and fell to the floor upon executing it.

He had forgotten that the sword that Yuuki had given to him, though it looked much like a normal katana, was much heavier than any katana he had ever seen and wielded. So when he had tried to execute the attack, it was like a little kid swinging around an aluminum bat like a professional only to fail miserably.

Despite this, it gave him an idea.

Since the wide reaching arc attack that he had used against Charlotte also made him lose balance, maybe he could use the momentum generated by the attack to quickly chain another attack?

Returning to the same starting position from the attack he had given out earlier, he placed most of his weight on a single foot. Once satisfied with his footing, he delivered his attack.

When he had attempted to stop his movement earlier, he nearly fell to the ground, this time however, he made no attempt to stop his movement. Instead, he used the momentum to deliver a secondary strike that, instead of delivering another horizontal attack, gave a vertical attack that started from below.

The movement was a bit crude, but it nonetheless gave him an idea of what he was attempting to do.

Sheathing his katana, he grabbed a towel that he had brought unto the clearing and draped it onto his neck.

He wasn't exactly satisfied with how the move had gone, but at least he had a start point for when he made an original skill.

* * *

><p>"Do you always get up that early to exercise?"<p>

Breakfast had ended and after a quick stop at their room, Ichika and Charlotte headed to their classroom.

"Yeah, it's great training for the body. That way, I could feel myself getting stronger or at least, not getting weaker."

"...so it's true that males are power obsessed creatures."

"What do you mean by that?"

Charlotte seemed to have made a rather odd comment.

"Oh! Uh, never mind that! A-anyway, you say that exercise makes you feel like your getting stronger, right?"

Ichika nodded.

"But since we're using IS wouldn't physical training be moot point?"

It's true that physical strength would do nothing as an IS held more power than any human could hope to match. Even Rakan, arguably, one of the most physically powerful person he ever met, couldn't hope to match an IS in terms of strength. When he had fought Rin, the bulky swords that she had used hadn't impeded her movements and actions, in fact the weight of the weapon itself made him more hesitant on even attempting a reckless attack.

"That's true, but muscle memory is important too, right? That's one of the reasons why we also do physical training with IS, so to make it feel like it's part of our body – or rather, an extension of ours."

That said, he still didn't know why he wasn't still synched with his IS. Some of those who had noticed it, thought that the factory setting might already be the settings that matched his specifications. He didn't know what to make of it since he didn't know what a synched IS felt in the first place – although he would no doubt say that his IS is feeling too slow. It was unlike the first time when he had rode Byaku Shiki as during that time, he didn't know what to expect.

"I suppose." Charlotte conceded as she entered the classroom.

Left unsaid was the fact that the morning exercises was also in preparation for future challenges he may face due to his supposed connections with Amakusa Yuuki. He might have an IS, but it wouldn't be honorable to use one in a sword fight when his opponent might not be able to use one.

Greeting a 'good morning' upon entering the classroom, he noticed that the girls in his class plus Rin, seemed to be talking about something. Houki was sitting down on her seat and seemed to have been paying attention to the discussion but at a distance.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn't really thought of replying in anyway to Houki's request a few days ago. Sure it would be moot point if he was the one that one the upcoming tournament, but giving no reply just because of that would be too despicable. He had been thinking of course, but that thinking usually resulted to the same reasoning he had made a few days ago and while it might make a good argument, he wasn't quite sure how Houki would take it.

Why couldn't things stay the same?

Charlotte, after he had said his greetings, asked what the fuss was about, but the girls quickly scattered. Rin made a flimsy excuse of needing to go to her own class while Cecilia made an even more flimsy excuse of needing to go to her own seat.

Houki might know what they might be talking about, but he wasn't exactly too keen on talking to Houki as of now.

* * *

><p>Class had ended two hours ago, but due to Ichika's difficulty with the current subjects, he had Charlotte review him for the technical aspects of IS that he hadn't quite grasped. It had took two hours, but Ichika felt that he had learned enough for the upcoming tournament.<p>

"Ichika, are you going for Special Training today?"

Charlotte didn't the look the least bit mentally wasted as he did after the study session. Was he simply that much of an idiot to be exhausted by such things? He was already having trouble with normal subjects as it is...

"Yeah. The tournament is tomorrow, right? So I'm hoping to cram whatever I need to learn today."

Going unprepared like he did with the last few battles he had gone through had showed him that being unprepared could cost him the battle, and as the battle with the rogue IS had shown, his life. He could also use these relatively safe battles as a form of training when he went to battles that only involved the sword. After all, live battle is worth even more than several hundreds of hours of training – something that Yuuki had shown to him in the last two months of their training.

Speaking of which, he hadn't heard anything from Hisoji and Rakan in regards to challengers. Aside from the occasional email that would have Rakan cursing him for his luck on staying at such a school, there hadn't been any news on potential challengers entering the city. If there were any challengers and they wanted to challenge him, he'd have to accept. It was to protect the honor of his master after all.

Hisoji had also given him a small guideline on what to expect from such a challenge.

Apparently, the challenge would either be in the form of first blood or once one side is incapacitated. Getting killed in such a match was a possibility, so even though there were rules, it didn't mean that all challengers would follow it. Aside from that, the losing party would have to relinquish an item of interest to the winning party, as to what extent it encompasses Hisoji didn't clarify.

Shaking his head, of such thoughts, he would worry about it when the time came.

Glancing to his left, he noticed a group of girls running.

The one thing that he heard from the passing girls, was that it seemed like three representative candidates were fighting in the third arena.

Immediately, he felt a chill run down his spine when he heard those words.

While he did indeed know at least three representative candidates in IS Academy, it didn't mean that it could be the three he knew, right?

The look of surprise from Charlotte told him all he needed to know.

* * *

><p>Rushing towards Arena 3, he tried to moderate his speed so that Charlotte can keep up, but the continually growing feeling of dread as he approached Arena 3 urged him to run as fast as he could to find out what was happening.<p>

He could already hear the sounds of battle, he only hoped that he wasn't too late.

Once Ichika and Charlotte reached the stands, he noticed that Houki had also come into the arena stands.

Turning towards the ongoing battle, it was just as he had feared.

Cecilia and Rin was currently fighting against Laura. It was a 2 on 1 battle, yet they were losing.

Rin tried to attack with her Dragon Cannon but all Laura did was raise her hand and the attack was dispelled.

He was surprised at that. It was unlike anything he had seen before now, yet...

"It's AIC." Charlotte said, not surprised at how the attack, that had given him trouble in the last tournament, was easily stopped.

"That's it. Since she's using that, she doesn't even think of evading Dragon Cannon."

It seemed like he was the only one out of the loop... again.

"What's AIC?"

"It's Shwarzer Roegen's third generation weapon. Active Inertia Canceler." Charlotte explained.

"It's an ability that negates the inertia of moving mass."

That... that encompassed a lot of things. If that was truly the case, then when an attack ever got near enough to Laura (as it seemed like the target of AIC was a close range weapon), she could simply stop the projectile, or even freeze an attacker in place by negating the forces. For a close range attacker like him, this would no doubt drive him into corner.

"Do you understand?"

Ichika didn't need to reply, the expression present in his face was enough of an indicator.

The battle took a turn for the worse, that even with the combined efforts of Cecilia and Rin, they couldn't properly attack Laura's IS. Although it was a 2 on 1 battle, it was clear to any watcher that the Cecilia and Rin had no sense of formal teamwork, and got into each others way quite often. Laura, whether she noticed it or not, only showed pleasure at the easy battle the two were giving her. It was a one-sided battle, and she knew it.

It was when Laura was reducing the barriers to 0 despite the fact that doing so, would automatically disable the IS, leaving them defenseless against the IS they were fighting.

Enough was enough.

"Come, Byaku Shiki!"

Materializing his IS, he immediately took out Yukihiro Nigata to cleave at the barrier that surrounded the audience stands. The initial barrier of the audience stands was a simple defense that could last physical strain and projectiles from normal IS, but at the fold-out ability of Yukihiro Nigata, it was powerless.

The barrier shattered as a glint of light flew up into the air while Ichika headed straight to Laura, with his fist clenched.

He knew that Laura was goading him to fight, and the pleased smile that she showed him only served to verify that fact. But he wasn't fighting for the sake of fighting her, no, it was to stop her from attacking his friends!

"Get your hands off of them!"

Laura merely raised her hand like she did with the previous attacks, as if her raised hand was commanding him to stop. She didn't look the least bit worried at her predicament.

Against his will however, he did stop. Ichika couldn't move his body, no matter how much he willed it. It was like he had been disconnected from his body and he could only feel, hear and see, he simply couldn't move at all.

He had expected it of course, after all the name of the weapon implied it had this ability, but even expecting it, he was still surprised to the extent of its ability.

Rin and Cecilia's IS had finally lost all of its barrier and had dematerialized. Due to the difference in size that the rope like projectiles that had been stopping them from moving, they dropped to the ground no longer held up by the ropes.

"Emotional and reckless. You're the epitome of a fool."

Laura watched Ichika struggle through the AIC, smirking at his powerlessness.

"You're not a worthy opponent just as I thought. Begone!"

Laura pointed her cannon towards Ichika's frozen form.

There was something odd however, enough to have her pause.

Although Ichika was indeed struggling, he didn't have a look of despair or fear despite his current situation. Furthermore, his earlier struggling expression was suddenly replaced with a tiny smirk.

It was at that moment, that Laura realized Ichika was holding nothing. His weapon wasn't in his hands.

A flash of light from above was all she noticed before, the fold-out form of Yukihiro Nigata cleaved at the large cannon, slicing it without any problem.

This sudden change in situation was enough for Laura to lose focus for a second, releasing the AIC, but at the same time gave the opening that Ichika needed.

Grabbing the fallen sword, he immediately cleaved at the remnants of the cannon and delivered a debilitating attack towards Laura's barrier. Even though he was furious at how Laura had used his friends to goad him into fighting her, it didn't mean that he would use that as a reasoning to hurt her more than he had to.

Without pause, Ichika positioned himself to finish the IS, with the current development, he doubted that Laura could possibly use her AIC at this state.

A sharp 'clang' rang through the arena. It was the only indicator that Ichika had before he realized that he hadn't at all cleaved at his target, and instead, someone had intervened.

"C-commander?"

Ichika only knew one person who Laura could have possibly called that title. That chances that her other commanders were here, was pretty slim so that obviously meant it was the person that he least wanted to intervene in this fight.

The look that Chifuyu directed his way made him swallow.

It seems like he was in trouble.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Not much to say here, except the fact that I skimmed through a lot of things so I can jump to the ones that are more interesting or ones that are completely different from canon.

This update is a bit late, and my only excuse is because I had been lazy on putting this up. I had actually finished this weeks ago.

If there's any notable errors, please notify me I'll try to fix it right away.


End file.
